Closure
by Joe's girl
Summary: Post season 4 but with some minor season 6 spoilers. Audrey can't accept the circumstances of Jack's death. So she launches her own investigation in order to find closure.
1. Chapter 1

_Hi! Thanks for hitting on this post. I hope you won't be sorry. Despite the fact that we are in the throes of season 6 here in the US, I like to pretend that season 5 never happened! This story is my idea of what happens after season 4. (In my AU world, Tony and Michelle are alive and well and living safely distant from Los Angeles. They won't have a huge role in this story, but will be part of it.) _

_As always, any character that I mention that also appears on the show belongs to Fox and not me. I have invented some of my own characters for the sake of the story. They're mine and are simply a product of my otherwise underused imagination. If you have access to the Season 4 DVD, watch the prequel to Season 5. This story will incorporate that into the story line. If you haven't seen it and don't have access to it, don't worry about it. I'll make sure that you will still understand what is happening._

_Now on with the story._

CLOSURE

It was nearly 7 o'clock on a Friday evening when Jim Heller strode, unsmiling, into his daughter's office. It was raining in Washington and he had his Burberry raincoat draped over his arm to indicate to his daughter that it late and time to go home. His manner was brusque as he opened a large leather brief case and pulled out a bound report. He looked at it for a long moment before tossing it on her desk; in a move deliberately made to show his disapproval.

"I don't know what you think you're going to gain from this, Audrey," he said as he glared at her. "You know what happened. Why do you need to torture yourself by reading it in detail?"

"It's called closure, Dad," Audrey said just as coolly. They had been arguing over this subject for weeks and neither would back down. "I need to read the report. I need to know exactly how the committee came to its conclusions. And, frankly, I don't understand your attitude. You loved Jack like a son. How can you rest not knowing if his death was an accident or if he was murdered by that Secret Service agent?"

"Yes, Audrey, I did love Jack like a son. And I am grieving for him just like a family member, just like you. The difference is that I'm willing to let him rest. I commissioned an inquiry into his death and the committee concluded that his death was an accident. An accident, Audrey. Period. No one conspired to kill Jack. Why aren't you willing to believe that?"

Audrey looked down at the report lying askew where her father had dropped it. "I don't know. I just have too many unanswered questions right now. That's why I need to read the report. I need to have those questions answered so that I can know for sure that Jack's death was an accident. Maybe then I can move on with my life.

"Look, Audrey, I understand how you feel," Jim Heller said in a gentler, more fatherly voice. "I guess at first I wanted someone to pay for Jack's death, too. That desire for revenge can be overwhelming. I felt that if someone were criminally responsible for Jack's death and if I could just see them go to prison, I'd be happy. But you know what the truth is, Audrey, no matter what happens, Jack isn't coming back. If the committee had decided that the Secret Service agent was criminally responsible, then I would have supported pressing charges, but I don't see any point in going out on a witch hunt in an attempt to make me, or you for that matter, feel better. That's not closure, Audrey," he added as he turned toward the door. "You do what you want, but I don't think reading that report is going to do anything but give you nightmares."

Audrey picked up the report and placed it in her own briefcase. "I already have nightmares, Dad. This report isn't going to make them any worse," she told him quietly. "Thank you for getting it for me."

As he reached the door, Jim turned back toward his daughter. "If you need to talk later tonight, feel free to call me. I doubt that I'm going to sleep very well." With that he was gone and Audrey was left alone with her thoughts.

She quickly blinked back tears that had formed and were threatening to fall, all the while trying to tell herself that her father's opinion didn't matter to her. Reading the report would either bring her closure or it would further convince her that Jack had been murdered and, if that was the case, she intended to pursue justice with every ounce of her strength. Jack deserved that. He deserved her loyalty. She hadn't shown him any at CTU and but she intended to make up for it.

Audrey made her way home through the Washington traffic that never seemed to let up. It was just over an hour later when she pulled into the driveway of her suburban Virginia home. Using the remote control, she opened the garage door and pulled the car in out of the rain. She shivered as she left the warm confines of the car and stepped out into the garage. It was a good night to take a long hot bath, snuggle up in a robe and read. She would have liked to read a novel or maybe a biography or anything lighter than the 300 page report that loomed in front of her, but she had been waiting for the report for weeks while her father used every stall tactic in the book to keep it from her. Now that she had it in hand, she intended to read it, every word of it.

Once inside, Audrey made her way into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. Then it was off to her bedroom to find some comfortable clothes. By 8:30 she was sitting at the desk in her study with an enormous mug of coffee and the report opened to the table of contents. The report was divided into several sections but the two longest were the transcripts of the committee's interviews with Tony and the Secret Service agent, Dale Spaulding. Audrey sighed quietly as she sipped the coffee and began reading Tony's testimony.

Six hours and a pot-and-a-half of coffee later, Audrey closed the report. She had read it from cover to cover. She was mentally exhausted and knew that she needed to sleep but she was wired to the hilt from all of the caffeine and knew that sleep wasn't going to come easily. It didn't matter; she was so tired that she was dizzy so she headed off to bed hoping to catch at least a couple of hours sleep before the sun rose.

As she expected, sleep eluded her. Her mind was just too active and restless and the words of the report seemed to swirl around and around in her overly tired brain. After nearly an hour, Audrey drifted off into a fitful sleep punctuated by one dream after another, snippets in time that put together made no sense. She woke repeatedly, each dream leaving her more spent than the last. Finally, as the first light came through the window, Audrey's sleep deepened and she found some rest.

It was another dream that woke her. She dreamed of Jack and a playful evening they had spent together just weeks before he was killed. Once awake, Audrey smiled remembering the evening. They had eaten dinner, take out Chinese food, if she remembered correctly, and were sitting on the sofa trying to decide which of the four movies that she had rented that they wanted to watch. Jack reached for the movie in Audrey's hand so that he could read the information on the back. As he did, she teasingly pulled it away from him. A little wrestling match ensued that resulted in both of them tumbling to the floor laughing. The game went on for several minutes until Jack gently pinned Audrey on her back and smothered her face with kisses. Thinking the game was over, Jack rolled over to take some of his weight off of her. Audrey, still keen to continue what they had started, rolled quickly to her right to escape and, hopefully, encourage Jack to pursue her. She got away before he realized what was happening, but he had been baited and knew that the pursuit was on. Within seconds he had her engulfed in his arms again both laughing at their own silliness.

It was such a light moment; one that Audrey cherished. She lay in bed thinking about it for a long time before she remembered the conversation they had later that same night while curled in bed together. She thought nothing of it at the time. It was playful banter between lovers. But now it seemed significant and Audrey played the conversation in her head several times. She remembered rolling onto her side against him, her arm resting on his chest. "Gee," she said, "you're lucky you caught me when I tried to escape or you might have ended up sleeping alone tonight."

"That wasn't luck, honey," Jack corrected her. "That was skill."

"Yeah, right," Audrey retorted. "You got lucky. There was no skill involved."

Jack laughed. "Wrong! If I learned anything in all of my years of field work, it was how to get the suspect when he was trying to escape. You didn't have a chance!"

"I still say it was luck. You only got me because I couldn't stand up fast enough. It was easy to catch me while I was still on the ground. What would Agent Bauer do if his suspect was up and running?"

"I'd draw my weapon."

"And you'd shoot?" Audrey asked. The conversation was beginning to take on a more serious tone.

"If I had to. It would depend on the situation. I remember at least a couple of time when I needed information from the suspect. In that case, if you shoot someone who's running and your aim isn't perfect, you run the risk of hitting a vital organ or major artery and then they can't provide any information. Then they're no good to you."

"So what do you do then?"

"If I could get close enough, I'd hit them from behind and knock them down or even knock them out if I had to."

"If you knocked them out, wouldn't that prevent them from giving you information?"

"No, even with a well placed hit, they'd usually only be unconscious for 2-3 minutes and you could usually bring them around with smelling salts. Once they woke up they were groggy for the next 10 minutes or so, but after that they were fine."

"_They were groggy for 10 minutes or so…" _Audrey heard that sentence again and again in her head and she found that something didn't make sense.

She stepped out of bed and hurried into her study. The report sat on the desk next to a cold cup of coffee. Audrey sat down and began paging through the first few pages of the transcript to find Tony's testimony.

She stabbed her finger at a paragraph. "Here it is," she said aloud although there was no one there to hear. Audrey read slowly through the transcript of the interview between the committee chairman, Harris Newton and Tony.

**CHAIRMAN**: Mr. Almeida, describe to us in detail what happened from the time you learned that Mr. Bauer was to be turned over to the Chinese.

**ALMEIDA**: I was in the locker room at CTU. I had just taken a shower and was getting dressed when one of the agents came in and told me that Jack was being handed over to the Chinese as a result of the operation at the embassy earlier that night. An operation which, by the way, resulted in the capture of Habib Marwan and allowed Jack to stop the annihilation of most of Los Angeles.

**CHAIRMAN**: We don't need you to editorialize, Mr. Almeida. Please continue without unnecessary commentary.

**ALMEIDA**: Yes, sir. As I said, I was in the locker room. Jack came in about two minutes later. I told him that I thought handing him over to the Chinese was unfair, that he shouldn't be made to take the fall.

**CHAIRMAN**: How did he respond to that, Mr. Almeida?

**ALMEIDA**: He said that no one was making him do anything.

**CHAIRMAN**: Did Mr. Bauer seem angry or upset. I mean, he was about to be handed over to a hostile government. What was his demeanor?

**ALMEIDA**: Jack was a tough guy to read. He didn't seem angry or upset. He seemed a little sad, I guess. He appeared resigned to his fate.

**CHAIRMAN**: What happened next, Mr. Almeida?

**ALMEIDA**: Jack got a phone call.

**CHAIRMAN**: Who called him?

**ALMEIDA**: I don't know, sir. He didn't mention the caller's name before he stepped out in the hallway to continue the conversation privately.

**CHAIRMAN**: Did you get the impression that the caller was someone who Mr. Bauer knew?

**ALMEIDA**: I can't answer that, sir.

**CHAIRMAN**: What happened next?

**ALMEIDA**: The next thing I knew I woke up on the floor of the locker room and I had a terrible headache.

**CHAIRMAN**: Who found you there?

**ALMEIDA**: No one. I woke up and got up on my own.

**CHAIRMAN**: Without help?

**ALMEIDA**: That's correct, sir.

**CHAIRMAN**: Speculate how you ended up unconscious on the floor of the CTU locker room, Mr. Almeida.

**ALMEIDA**: Jack hit me with the butt of his gun when my back was turned.

**CHAIRMAN**: Did you hear Mr. Bauer come in behind you?

**ALMEIDA**: No, sir, I didn't, but my back was to the door.

**CHAIRMAN**: Why did Mr. Bauer find the need to render you unconscious? He was outside of the locker room. If he decided that he wanted to escape, why didn't he just go? You just testified that your back was turned.

**ALMEIDA**: I was supposed to debrief Jack. I was going to go looking for him as soon as I was dressed. I guess he didn't feel that he could take the chance that I'd come out into the hallway looking for him. He needed the time that I would be unconscious to make his getaway.

**CHAIRMAN**: Do you have any idea how long you were unconscious?

**ALMEIDA**: Probably just a few minutes. I don't know for sure.

**CHAIRMAN**: What did you do when you woke up? 

**ALMEIDA**: I looked for Jack in the locker room and in the hallway. When I realized that he was gone, I called in the lock down.

**CHAIRMAN**: Let me get this straight. You woke up on the floor and had the presence of mind to go looking for Mr. Bauer. When you couldn't find him you just assumed that he was trying to escape?

**ALMEIDA**: That's correct.

**CHAIRMAN**: That seems a bit of a leap of faith to me, Mr. Almeida. Why would your first thought be that this person, who you yourself described as "resigned to his fate," would have tried to escape?

**ALMEIDA**: With all due respect, sir, I can't speculate on what went on in Jack's mind.

**CHAIRMAN**: I understand that. Let's move on. So, you called in the lock down. What did you do next?

**ALMEIDA**: I called Bill Buchanan. He was the ranking agent at CTU at the time.

**CHAIRMAN**: What did you tell Mr. Buchanan?

**ALMEIDA**: I told him exactly what I told you. I said that Jack hit me over the head and knocked me out and that while I was unconscious, he escaped.

**CHAIRMAN**: I have a statement here from Mr. Buchanan corroborating that. It will be part of the final report.

Audrey stopped reading for a moment and paged quickly looking for Bill's statement. She found it several pages later. As Chairman Newton indicated, Bill's statement did corroborate Tony's testimony.

Audrey sat back in the chair and closed her eyes for a moment thinking about what she had just read and compared it to Jack's pillow talk all those months ago that when he knocked someone out that they were groggy for 10 minutes afterward. In everything she read from both Tony's testimony and Bill's statement, it seemed clear that Tony was in no way groggy or unable to think clearly. It appeared that he called in the lock down almost immediately after regaining consciousness.

Audrey paged further into the report and found a copy of Tony's medical report. Tony had been seen in the medical unit of CTU later that same morning, after Jack was killed. (The examination would have been required before Tony was allowed to leave CTU that day. After being held by a hostile CTU would have wanted both a physical and emotional evaluation to ensure that Tony was, in fact, well enough to go home.) The physician on duty noted that among other injuries, Tony had a contusion on the back of his head consistent with being struck with a blunt object. The doctor also noted that Tony had a mild concussion.

_That's interesting,_ Audrey thought. Tony certainly did sustain some kind of blunt force trauma to his head. And, it was hard enough to cause a concussion. Everyone presumed that the injury occurred when Jack hit Tony, but Audrey wondered if the injury could have occurred earlier, while Tony was being held hostage.

The report suddenly presented more questions than answers. From the beginning she believed that the Secret Service was trying to cover up Jack's death. Dale Spaulding, the agent who fired the shot that killed Jack, had a history of being a loose cannon. He had discharged his weapon more than once in his career and on one occasion had received a reprimand for doing so unnecessarily. Now, as she read the testimony, she began to wonder if somehow Tony was involved.

That didn't make any sense. Audrey's head was swimming with too much caffeine and too little sleep but she forced herself to focus. Why would Tony be involved? Why would Tony want Jack dead? Tony had been willing to risk everything to save Jack's and Audrey's lives when they were under siege. He credited Jack with convincing President Palmer to pardon him. He had no reason to want Jack dead but based on what she knew, she was sure that Tony was lying. A new idea crossed her mind. Maybe the answer was that Tony didn't want Jack dead. Maybe Tony was trying to help him escape. That sounded more like it, Audrey told herself. Tony was trying to help Jack escape and when the escape plan went wrong and Jack was killed, Tony needed to cover his own ass. If he told the truth, he would have faced charges. He had been that route before and Audrey was sure that he didn't want to walk the same road again, especially since David Palmer was no longer in office to protect him.

Audrey sat back now believing that she understood. Tony and Jack had concocted an escape plan. It failed when the Secret Service showed up earlier than expected to take Jack into custody. But if that was the case, why didn't Jack just give himself up? Tony still had a cover story so he wouldn't have been charged and Jack would have been handed over to the Chinese as planned. So why try and escape from a locked down building? Jack had to know that he had little chance of escaping.

Now Audrey was really confused. She felt like she was trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle with a blindfold on. She had groped in the darkness long enough to get most of the pieces to fit, but the last few just wouldn't go together to give her a clear picture of what had happened. She needed help. She needed to talk to Tony; he had the answers. Tony was the only person she knew who could fit those final pieces into the puzzle. The problem was that she doubted that he would tell her anything voluntarily. She was going to have to convince him that it was safe to talk to her.

Audrey pulled the desk chair close to her computer and began tapping on the keys. Within a few seconds she was in a government database that gave her access to addresses and phone numbers of current and former federal employees. She typed in Tony's name and the computer brought up the address where he had been living after his divorce from Michelle. The address was listed as "last known", but no current address was available. When Tony cut his ties with the federal government, he made sure that he completely severed them. Audrey needed to find a way to get in touch with Tony. She knew that it was possible to track someone down using the internet, but after trying a couple of quick searches, she came up empty. Tony wasn't interested in being found.

Audrey sat back and thought for a moment and quickly formulated a plan. Shortly after Jack's death, Audrey had packed up his personal affects and shipped them back to his daughter. A few days later, she realized that she had a pair of his cuff links in her jewelry box. The cuff links had been his favorites. They were the pair that Tony had given Jack as a gift for being the best man at his wedding. Audrey knew that she should return the cuff links to Kim, but she wanted them as a keepsake. So instead of returning them, she decided to keep them and that Kim would never notice that they were missing. Those cuff links were about to come in handy. Audrey picked up her phone and dialed Kim's California number.

"Kim?" Audrey said as the phone was answered. "It's Audrey. How are you?"

Audrey suspected that Kim was surprised by her call. The two had never been close. Audrey didn't dislike Kim; they just had never spent enough time together to really warm up to each other. They made awkward small talk for a few minutes before Audrey got to the purpose of her call.

"Kim, I came across something of your father's when I was digging through my jewelry box the other day. It's a pair of cuff links that Tony gave him. I know that I should return them to you, but I was wondering how you would feel about giving them back to Tony. I thought he might appreciate the gesture."

"That's fine with me, Audrey," Kim agreed. "I was looking for something of Dad's to give Tony but I couldn't decide what he would like."

"That's great," Audrey told her. "I'll take care of sending these to him. Do you have an address for Tony?"

"Actually, I don't. He and Michelle got remarried and moved away from LA. They were planning to start a business, but I've been so caught up in my own little world that I haven't kept in touch with them."

"Do you know who would have their address?" Audrey asked.

"I would try Chloe. Even if she doesn't keep in touch with them, she can track anybody on the internet. She can probably tell you what groceries they bought last week. I'd call her."

"Thanks, Kim. I'll do that," Audrey told her.

After exchanging goodbyes and hanging up, Audrey went back to the government database and found a cell phone number for Chloe O'Brian. Audrey dialed the number and was rewarded on the second ring.

"Hello."

"Chloe? This is Audrey Raines."

"Ah, Hi, Audrey. Did you need something?" Chloe asked getting right to the point.

"Actually, I did. I was trying to track down Tony Almeida and I can't find a phone number or address for him. I was hoping that you would have them."

"Track him down? It sounds like you want to serve him with a subpoena. Why are you looking for Tony?" Chloe asked. "Is he in some kind of trouble?"

"Oh, no, of course not. I have a pair of cuff links that he gave to Jack that I want to give back to him."

"Shouldn't the cuff links go to Kim? I mean, all of Jack's property technically belongs to Kim. I know you and Jack were close but Kim is his next of kin and the executor of his estate. Legally, you need to talk to Kim before giving any of Jack's possessions away."

"I already spoke to Kim and we agreed to send them to Tony," Audrey told her. Chloe could be a strange bird, but this seemed a little over the top even for Chloe. Audrey was getting the distinct impression that Chloe was trying to stonewall her. "I just need an address or even a phone number would be fine."

"I don't know how to say this, Audrey, but Tony and Michelle moved away from LA to try and start over. They don't keep in touch with me or anybody at CTU. They wanted to forget the past and what happened to Jack. I'm not sure that having you call them is exactly what they're looking for."

"I don't want to dredge up any unhappiness for either of them; I just want to send Tony these cuff links. I hardly think that would be an intrusion in their new lives," Audrey said. Her voice was hinting of irritation. "Is there some reason that you don't want me to talk to Tony, Chloe?"

"No, no, of course not. I'm just looking out for Tony and Michelle. Like I said, they want to start over."

"I understand that, but if you'll just give me their phone number, I'll call them and make sure it's okay to send the cuff links and I promise that if they say no, that I won't bother them further. Please, Chloe, just give me their phone number so I can take care of this."

Chloe seemed to run out of excuses as to why Audrey shouldn't have Tony's phone number and finally relented. She gave Audrey a North Carolina phone number and disconnected abruptly. Chloe's reluctance to give Audrey the number made her wonder if Chloe had some inside information on Tony's role in Jack's death. She dialed Tony's number quickly fearing that Chloe was also trying to call him to warn him of Audrey's impending call.

Audrey listened as the phone rang several times before it was answered by Michelle. The length of time it took for Michelle to answer made her suspect that Michelle had been on with another call and Audrey was picked up through call waiting. Now she was sure that her concerns of moments earlier were correct. Chloe had called Tony to warn him that she was calling. Audrey knew she had to play it cool or the Almeidas were going to shut her down. She had to act like she knew nothing.

"Hi, Michelle. How are you? This is Audrey Raines."

"Audrey, what a surprise," Michelle said in return. "How have you been?"

"I'm doing okay, Michelle. Thanks for asking. Look, I know you're probably busy and I won't keep you. It's just that I was going through some of my things and I discovered a pair of cuff links that Tony had given Jack when you two got married. Kim and I thought that Tony might like to have them back as a keepsake."

"How wonderful of you to think of Tony," Michelle said warmly. "Tony would treasure them."

"Great. If you'll just give me your address, I'll get them in the mail this afternoon."

"Sure," Michelle replied. "Do you have a pencil? It's 4371 Milford Street, Durham, North Carolina."

Audrey knew that she wasn't a very good liar, but she had to pull this off. She wanted to talk to Tony in person and this was her only chance to do it without arousing his suspicion. "You're kidding!" Audrey said acting surprised. She looked at the map of North Carolina that she had pulled up on the internet. "You live in Durham? I'm going to be in Raleigh on Tuesday negotiating with one of our defense contractors. I don't want to intrude, but could I stop by and bring the cuff links?"

Michelle seemed at a loss for words. Audrey knew that Michelle had bought the lie and that she was taken by surprise. "Audrey, I don't want you to come out of your way. It would be easier for you just to mail the cuff links."

"Durham is hardly out of my way when I'm in Raleigh. Besides, I'd love to see you. I know how much you two meant to Jack. He would have been so happy to know that you got back together. He loved you both," Audrey said doing her best to turn on the charm and garner some sympathy. "And, of course, I owe Tony my life. I can never repay him for that. The least I can do is stop by and drop off the cuff links in person."

Audrey hadn't left much room for Michelle to wriggle out of her self imposed invitation. "We'd love to see you, too, Audrey," Michelle said with what Audrey could tell was something less than enthusiasm. "What time should we expect you?"

Final arrangements for the visit were made before Audrey hung up the phone. Her heart was pounding. She knew that she was on the right track. Whatever was going on, both Tony and Michelle were part of it and Audrey intended to find out what was going on.

Once off the phone, Audrey quickly pulled up flight schedules to Raleigh. She booked a flight for late on Monday and a hotel room and a rental car. She could have easily flown into Raleigh/Durham on Tuesday afternoon, but if Tony and Michelle suspected that she was up to something, they might do some detective work and look for evidence that she was really coming to North Carolina on business. The Monday flight and hotel would make that seem more realistic.

Next she had to explain to her father that she wouldn't be at work on Tuesday. She picked up her phone and dialed his number.

"Hi, Dad," she said as he answered the phone.

"Hi, honey," he responded. He paused for a moment before continuing. "Have you read the report?"

"I was up most of last night."

"So, what's your conclusion?"

Audrey decided that it was best for the moment that she lie. "I guess for the moment that I have to agree with the conclusion of the committee. Jack's death was most likely an accident, but I think Agent Spaulding should have gotten more than a reprimand for his actions."

"Maybe he should have, honey, but remember he has to live with Jack's death for the rest of his life. That's a pretty heavy sentence to bear."

"I suppose you're right. Anyway, I decided that since I was looking for some closure, that it was time for me to part with some of Jack's things that I still have. I talked to his daughter this morning and we agreed that a pair of his cufflinks that I had should go to Tony Almeida."

"That's a nice gesture," Jim Heller agreed. "I'm sure Tony would appreciate it."

"I called Tony to get an address so I could send them. After talking to him, sending the cufflinks seemed so impersonal that I decided to take them to him. He lives in Durham, so I'm going to take Tuesday off and fly down there."

"Do you really think that's a good idea, Audrey? Don't you think spending time with Tony and Michelle is just going to bring back a lot of bad memories?"

"No, not really. I feel better since I read the report and I think that seeing the Almeidas will just add to that feeling of closure that I'm looking for. So, do you mind if I take Tuesday off?"

Jim sighed. "No, not at all. Maybe you should take a few more days off and relax at the beach in North Carolina."

"Thanks, Dad, but I think the one day is enough for now. I have a lot of work to do and if I take any more time off I'll just get behind. Thanks for being so understanding. I love you, Dad."

"I love you, too, Audrey," Jim returned. "I'll see you on Monday."

Audrey hung up and looked at the picture of Jack that she kept on her desk. She took it one evening on her balcony. The colors of the setting sun seemed to set off the gold in Jack's hair. He was smiling and squinting a bit against the glare. He looked so happy and so alive. She wished that she could step back into that moment in time. They had just finished dinner and Jack had stepped out onto the balcony to smoke a cigar. After Audrey took the picture, they stood watching the setting sun together. Neither said a word; they just watched until the sun dipped below the horizon. The memory hung about her like a cloud. She could almost smell the aroma of the fine tobacco and it once again made her long for Jack's presence.

"I'll get to the bottom of this, Jack," she said to the empty air. "I promise, sweetheart. I'll find out why you died and I promise that I'll make it right."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Audrey took a deep breath as she looked at the clock on the dashboard of her rented Lexus sedan. It was almost 7 o'clock and the sun was just beginning to set. The glare of the low sun through the windshield was making it hard to read the GPS but she knew nonetheless that she was less than a mile from Tony's and Michelle's home. If she got the last couple of turns right, she would get to their house at seven as planned. Now if she could just figure out what she was going to say and how she was going to broach the subject of Tony's testimony, everything would be fine. After spending most of the last three days trying to figure out what she was going to say to Tony, Audrey had finally given up and decided that she would have to take whatever opportunity was provided to her and, if none was provided, she would just bring it up no matter how awkward that seemed.

Two more lefts and then a right and Audrey turned into the Almeida's driveway. She pulled up behind a black Expedition and parked. The box containing the cufflinks sat on the passenger seat. Audrey reached for the box and opened it. She hated giving up one of the few things that she had that belonged to Jack but it was too late to change her mind now. Besides, it was going for a worthy cause. How else was she going to get to the bottom of what happened the night Jack died?

Audrey got out of the car and made her way to the front porch. Tony answered the door with a big smile.

"Audrey, how are you doing?" he asked as he hugged her. "You look good."

The greeting seemed a bit over the top. They didn't know each other well and she had never considered Tony gregarious or particularly demonstrative.

"I'm hanging in there, Tony. How are you?" she asked as he led her into the house.

By the time they stepped into the entrance, Michelle was walking down the stairs from the second floor. Audrey couldn't help but smile at the sight of Michelle's petite frame now sporting a slightly bulging belly.

"Congratulations! You should have told me that you were pregnant."

Michelle and Tony both grinned happily and Michelle unconsciously rubbed her stomach. "I guess I didn't think to tell you when you called," Michelle answered. "Let me introduce you," she said pointing at her midsection. "Meet Jack Bauer Almeida."

"Oh, how sweet," Audrey gushed. "Jack would be so proud to have you name your son after him."

"It was either Jack or Jackie. We didn't know until last week when Michelle had an ultrasound and we found out that it was a boy," Tony explained. "If it weren't for Jack we wouldn't have gotten back together. We owe him everything, Audrey, and we'll never forget him."

The small talk progressed slowly and Michelle invited Audrey to have dessert with them on their patio. The spring day had been warm and the evening temperature, while cooler, remained pleasant. Michelle led Audrey through the sliding glass door while Tony retrieved a cheesecake and a pot of coffee from the kitchen. The conversation lulled a bit while they ate and, as Tony poured a second cup of coffee for each of them, Audrey reached into her bag and pulled out the box with the cufflinks.

"Tony," she said as she set the box in front of him. "Jack wore these all of the time. He loved them and he loved the two of you. I can't tell you how much it hurt him when you separated and he would have been so happy to see you now especially with the baby coming.

Tony opened the box and picked up the cufflinks. He stared at them and smiled. "These bring back a lot of memories. Jack was the best friend I've ever had. I miss him."

"I know how you feel," Audrey said closing her eyes and shaking her head slightly. Audrey was sure that Tony's reaction and his words were sincere which made her feel just a little bit guilty that she was about to turn the conversation in another direction and bring up Jack's death. But from what she could tell, the timing was good. If Tony or Michelle had ever suspected that she had an ulterior motive, she thought that the last half hour of dessert conversation had probably put that to rest. "You know, Tony, for the life of me I still can't understand what Jack was thinking when he tried to escape. Why would he have done that?"

"I'm not sure that I blame him, Audrey. The prospect of a Chinese prison wasn't a good one," Tony said. "Jack knew what he was facing."

"I understand that, Tony, but what I don't get is what made him change his mind. You said that when he came into the locker room that he seemed resigned to being handed over to the Chinese. What happened? What made him decide to run?"

"Only Jack knows that. I'm not going to tell you that I know what prompted it but I will tell you that I would have done the same thing."

"My father is certain that even if Jack was handed over to the Chinese that there could have been a diplomatic solution. I wish I understood what made him run. Do you know who called him on the phone?"

"I don't know, Audrey. He didn't say their name and then he stepped outside into the hallway."

"Whoever it was called from a secure line. Both CTU and the Secret Service tried to trace the call and both found it to be untraceable. Not everyone has access to a secure phone. It makes me think that someone inside of a government agency called him."

Tony shook his head. "I've stopped trying to figure it out, Audrey. And for the sake of your sanity, I suggest that you do the same. Figuring out what happened isn't going to bring Jack back to you."

"I know, but I feel like I could move on if I could just understand. Everything Jack did just seemed so unlike him. Escaping and not facing the consequences of his actions just isn't something I'd expect from the Jack Bauer I knew. It's all so out of character. Look at what he did to you. I still can't believe that he knocked you unconscious. It's so unlike him."

"I disagree," Tony told her. "Knocking me out was quintessential Jack. He was trying to protect me. He knew that he needed to escape and if I caught on I was either going to have to turn him in or lie to protect him. He didn't want me to do either so he knocked me out to spare me from either option."

"But his plan backfired. You weren't unconscious long enough for him to escape."

"Maybe he didn't have the heart to hit me hard enough to keep me unconscious for a longer period of time," Tony speculated.

"He hit you hard enough to cause a concussion," Audrey reminded him. "At least that's what the doctor at CTU put in his report."

"I think the doctor was a little over zealous. I'm not sure I really had a concussion. Other than a slight headache for the next few hours, I felt fine."

Audrey noticed that Michelle was fidgeting during their conversation but said nothing. She turned her attention back to Tony whom she thought she was starting to wear down. "What did you think about Agent Spaulding? After reading the report, I thought that he was a little too anxious to fire, like he wanted to kill Jack."

Tony seemed to be getting a little annoyed. "Audrey, I hate to try and second guess Spaulding. He made a split second decision. You and I think that he was wrong, but what it comes down to was that he was being fired on and he returned fire."

"You said that Jack was just laying down cover, that he was firing wide. Why didn't Spaulding see that?"

"It's not always easy to think straight when you're in a gunfight, especially if you've never been in one before. We were in an enclosed space and bullets were ricocheting all over the place. It was a scary situation. I was fortunate enough to know Jack and how he thought. I knew that he wasn't trying to kill either Spaulding or me so the only possible explanation to his firing was to lay down cover. Spaulding didn't know Jack; he didn't now how he thought. When bullets started to come in his general direction he felt that he needed to protect himself. Everyone in law enforcement is taught to shoot with the intent to kill. It is the only way you can guarantee your own safety."

"I think it's interesting that you're willing to speculate on what Jack was thinking when he was shooting at you but you won't speculate on why he decided to escape," Audrey said pointedly.

Michelle finally spoke. "Audrey, I'm not sure I like the direction this is going. Are you accusing Tony of something? He was trying to protect Jack, not get him killed."

"No, I'm not accusing Tony of anything. I just think there was more to Jack's death than anyone is willing to admit. I don't think it was as simple as him being accidentally shot by the Secret Service while he was trying to escape. I just want to know the truth. At this point, I don't even care what the truth is. I just want to understand it and know why Jack died."

Tony had regained control of his emotions and he spoke softly to Audrey. "We all lost someone very special to us that night, Audrey. This is hard for all of us. Michelle and I left a city that we loved just to get away from the memories. God knows that Kim is still trying to adjust. Chloe O'Brian won't even talk about Jack. All of us want to blame someone for taking Jack away from us but there simply is no one to blame. What you read in the report is exactly what happened. No one is lying to you. I was there, Audrey. I saw what happened. If I could pin this on Spaulding, God knows, I would. I'd love to see him pay for killing Jack, but I can't do that in good conscience. Jack took a calculated risk and he lost. I don't blame him for trying. I just wish it would have worked and we wouldn't be having this conversation. He'd be sitting on some beach somewhere and we'd be wondering where he was and smiling that he got away with it. Instead, we're mourning him. We'll never forget him and we'll never completely stop mourning him, but we all have to move on with our lives, Audrey, and that includes you."

"I guess you're right, Tony. I guess I have to figure out how to move on," Audrey said as if conceding. She looked at her watch. "I really should be going. I have a ten o'clock flight and I still have to return the car. Thanks so much for dessert. Jack would want the best for both of you and so do I."

They exchanged cool goodbyes and Tony escorted Audrey out to her car. She saw him standing there in the dusk watching her leave. Tony had been well trained and she didn't get any new information from him. What she did get was an even stronger sense that Tony knew far more about Jack's death than he was willing to admit. He obviously wanted her to drop any further questions and accept the finding of the inquiry committee but she had no intention of doing that. As she drove to the airport, Audrey started formulating a plan. She still had lots of questions and she intended to get answers to all of them.

Audrey went to work the next morning after another poor night's sleep. Her brain was still full from the conversation with Tony and with her plans to go forward with her own investigation. To do that, she would need a copy of Jack's autopsy report which she would print as soon as she got to work.

The morning was busier than Audrey had expected. With being out of the office the previous day, she found herself in back to back meetings and briefings all morning. Her 11:30 meeting wrapped up promptly at 12:30 and Audrey put away her reading glasses and walked out of her office.

"Oh, there you are, Audrey," said her father in his usual booming voice. "You've been stuck in that office all morning. How was your trip?"

"It was fine," she said without elaborating.

"Are you ready for lunch? I was going to eat in my office, but it's such a nice day that I thought I'd go outside and enjoy the sunshine."

"Thanks, Dad, but I have a load of paperwork to do and I have to return some calls. I brought some lunch with me and I'm just going to eat at my desk while I work."

What Audrey told her father was partially true. She did have paperwork and calls that needed to be dealt with, but she also wanted to take a few minutes to print and review Jack's autopsy. She had been told the details of the report but wanted to read them for herself no matter how unpleasant they might be. Jim Heller accepted his daughter's excuse and told her that he would see her later. Audrey waited until her father was gone and sat down at her computer to look pull up the report. She ran through the various fields and finally the report was in front of her. She clicked the print icon and listened to her printer hum as it warmed up.

As she waited for the report to print, Audrey moved her mouse and clicked again to view any activity on the report. She knew that she was just being nosey, but she wanted to see who else had had access to Jack's autopsy. The results didn't necessarily surprise her. Bill Buchanan had printed a copy as had the head of Secret Service and her father. Her eyes followed the list chronologically back to the date it was originally posted. Audrey read the entries with little more than a passing interest until she got to the three oldest.

At the bottom of the list within a few days of the autopsy's posting there were three entries that Audrey didn't understand. All three looked like they were made in order to edit the report. She tried to open the entries and get a better idea of what kind of edits were made, but she didn't have access. She sat staring at the computer monitor for a few minutes trying to figure out what all of it meant. Realizing that she was at an impasse, Audrey left her desk and headed to the IT department.

She reached the first floor office of the head of IT and as expected, a tall, reed-thin middle aged man was sitting surrounded by humming computer equipment. Easy listening style music played on an outdated AM/FM radio with an 8-track tape player sitting on a shelf behind him. Dean Baranski had worked in IT for as long as anyone at DoD could remember. At 55, he was the ultimate computer geek. He wore polyester clothes that Audrey was sure were purchased in the 70's and his huge, plastic framed glasses could have been found at an Elton John garage sale. His favorite musical group was The Carpenters, although Air Supply was also high on the list. Dean was one of the sweetest, shiest people on the planet and he knew everything there was to know about the government's computer database. Audrey knocked lightly on the door frame knowing that any unexpected sound would make Dean jump.

"M…M…Mrs. Raines," he stuttered trying to get over his shock. "Come in, come in. This is a surprise. You don't usually get down to my part of the building."

"I know," Audrey admitted with a smile. "Look, Dean, I hate to bother you, but can you take a look at something for me. I can't figure it out."

"Sure, Mrs. Raines. Anything. What can I do?" Dean asked.

"Pull up the autopsy report on John Stephen Bauer," she instructed him.

"You mean Jack Bauer? The guy that used to work for Secretary Heller? The one who was shot trying to escape from the Secret Service?"

"That's the one," Audrey agreed. "Did you know him?"

"I met him a couple of times when he had IT requests. Kind of quiet. Seemed like a nice person. I was sorry to hear how he died. He seemed too mild mannered to be some hot shot CIA agent, but that's what some of the IT guys were talking about at lunch a couple of days after he died."

Audrey hated the fact that there had been so much talk about Jack after his death. Some of what was said was true, but much of it was rumor and innuendo. Audrey wanted nothing more than to set the record straight, but in doing so it would have revealed her feelings for him and that was something that she preferred to keep private. So instead of defending Jack, she shrugged and agreed with Dean. "Yeah, it does seem out of character for him, doesn't it?"

"Guess you really don't know people that you work with as well as you think you do," Dean said as his fingers danced along the keyboard. "Okay, here it is. What do you want me to look at?"

"Look at the activity on this document. You can see the date that the document was created. Then in the next few days there are three edits to it. Who would have been editing an autopsy report?"

"That's not unusual, Mrs. Raines," Dean told her. "I've had to look at autopsy reports before and seen the same thing. Usually the medical examiner dictates the report and a secretary transcribes it. Later the ME comes back and adds things like lab reports that weren't available when the original report was written."

"Oh," Audrey said a little embarrassed that she was seeing conspiracy theories around every corner. "Is that all it is? I thought maybe someone was trying to cover something up."

"That's usually what it is," Dean said. "But let me look at this and we can see for sure." He continued to tap on the keyboard for a moment. "Okay, here's the first edit. It was made by the same doctor who dictated the original autopsy report three days earlier. He added an addendum saying that specimens sent to the pathology lab came back negative. The next edit was made two days after that by the same doctor. He added a final addendum to say that the toxicology was negative for any drugs, alcohol or toxins. He says here that based on the results of the physical examination of the body and the pathology and toxicology reports he determined that the cause of death was massive exsanguination secondary to a gunshot wound."

Audrey stood reading over Dean's shoulder. "If that was the final report, why did he edit the third time?"

"I don't know. Let me look at that edit." Dean was silent while he tapped on the keys again. "This is interesting," he mumbled quietly. "I wonder who did this. This doesn't make any sense."

"What is it?"

"I don't really know. Someone edited some parts of the report but whoever it was, he was good. He covered his tracks really well. I can't figure out who he was or what changes he made.

"So, you can't tell who did it or where the source computer was located?"

"No. It's impossible to follow the trail backward. I'm completely road blocked. I've got to tell you, Mrs. Raines. This is an impressive piece of work."

"Do you know anybody good enough to do it?"

"No one. If I did, I'd hire him. I've got some really good people working for me but not one of them is capable of this. This guy has got some incredible talent."

"The only question other than who did this is why they did it. Why would someone have edited that report and tried to cover it up?" In truth, Audrey had a good idea who had the talent to edit the report without leaving an electronic signature and that was Chloe O'Brian. Now she just needed to figure out why she would have done it.

"I can't answer that one, Mrs. Raines."

Audrey shook her head. This was getting more and more suspicious by the minute. First Chloe had been evasive with her on the phone. Then Tony and Michelle both seemed to be hiding something and now she finds that Jack's autopsy was covertly edited. Audrey suppressed an involuntary shiver. The whole situation was starting to scare her.

"Dean, someone took a lot of care to cover up their tracks in this edit. Obviously they don't want anyone to know about it. Maybe you should do the same thing and remove any electronic evidence that you and I have been looking at this autopsy. Is that possible?"

"Oh, sure. It'll take some work, but I can do it. I'm not sure that I understand why. We aren't doing anything wrong by looking at the autopsy. It's not classified information."

"I know that. I just don't want our names attached to it if some kind of cover up is going on."

Dean nodded. "I understand. I'll make sure that it's taken care of. Are you going to pass this information on to the CIA?"

"I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it. For now, let's keep it between you and me and I'll try and figure out the best course of action," Audrey suggested.

"If that's what you think is best, I'll go along with it, Mrs. Raines."

"Thanks, Dean. I appreciate it. I'll let you know what I come up with."

Audrey went back to her office and tried to process this latest information. She considered telling her father about it but decided against it. She needed to have someone objective look at the autopsy report and see if they thought there was anything unusual about it. And Audrey knew just the right person.

Heath Johnson was a forensic pathologist for the FBI. He and Audrey had gone to undergraduate school together at Yale and had dated for most of their four years there. Despite breaking up in their senior year, they had remained friends ever since. After college, Heath went on to medical school at Harvard. Their paths rarely crossed for several years until Heath moved to Washington and went to work for the FBI following a forensic pathology fellowship. If there was anything strange about the autopsy findings, Heath would be about to recognize it. Audrey decided to call him later in the day.

Her afternoon was busy and Audrey had little time to think about Jack or the strange activity that seemed to surround his autopsy. She was on her way home when she finally had a chance to call Heath. After making the usual small talk, Audrey cut right to the chase.

"Heath, I need a favor from you. I'd like you to look over an autopsy report for me and tell me what you think. I can't give you a lot of information over the phone, but if I can stop by your house tonight, I'll bring dinner and we can review the report together and I'll explain the whole thing."

Heath, a bachelor who never turned down an offer of dinner, agreed. Audrey stopped and picked up two orders of baby back ribs, fries and cole slaw along with a six pack of beer. It was one of Heath's favorite meals and she knew that he'd be more than happy to help her once his stomach was full. Soon she was at his house and the two were gorging themselves on some of the best ribs either had ever had.

Heath finished first and walked to the kitchen sink to rinse barbecue sauce from his fingers. "So tell me what this is all about, Audrey," he said as he grabbed two beers from the refrigerator.

"It's a long story, Heath, but suffice it to say that a member of my father's staff was killed several months ago under suspicious circumstances. It seems to me that someone is trying to cover up something about his death, but no one will talk. Today I decided to print a copy of the autopsy and found that someone edited the report and then wiped out any trace that they had been in the record and what they edited. Why would someone want to change an autopsy after the fact?"

"I can't say without reading the report and having more details about the circumstances surrounding the death, but there are lots of reasons that people want to change the facts in an autopsy. Let me read this first and then we'll talk."

Audrey sat patiently while Heath read. He finished the report in a few minutes and looked up at her. "On quick review, there's nothing unusual about this report. Tell me the rest of the story."

Audrey filled Heath in on the details surrounding Jack's death. He listened quietly and when she finished, he again paged through the report for a moment before speaking. "This is pure speculation, Audrey, but I've got a couple of ideas. I think you're right; someone wants to cover something up here. The two possibilities are that they're trying to make a murder look like an accidental shooting or they're trying to cover up a suicide."

"Suicide! On, Heath, no. Jack didn't kill himself. I won't even entertain that possibility."

"Why not? This guy was in a serious predicament. He was about to be turned over to the Chinese and probably tortured to death. I'd kill myself rather than have that happen. I wonder if the gunshot wound was self inflicted and the report was changed to make it look like the Secret Service agent accidentally killed him. You would have to make a number of changes to the autopsy report to make a suicide look like an accident, but it could be done."

"If Jack committed suicide, why would anyone want to cover that up? The government would be happy not to have to investigate a Secret Service agent involved shooting, so they wouldn't want to cover it up."

"Maybe someone close to Bauer wanted to spare his family the pain. Did he have a wife or children? Parents?"

"His wife was dead but he had a daughter. His father's still alive but they weren't close."

"Would anyone with access to the autopsy have been close enough to him to want to protect his family?"

Audrey thought of Chloe, Tony and Michelle and nodded. "Yeah, there were three agents all with close, personal ties to Jack who would also have had the computer skill to create a cover like this."

"Insurance is another possible issue. Field agents like Bauer are usually well insured. Death in the line of duty results in a huge pay out. If there was evidence that he committed suicide the insurance company won't pay. How big of a pay out did the family get? At the risk of sounding cold, who profited from Bauer's death?"

This time Audrey shook her head. "Jack wasn't really a field agent at the time of his death. He worked for DoD and was on provisional assignment with CTU. He may not have been covered by a line of duty death policy like an active field agents are. And the only person in Jack's will was his daughter. She wouldn't have been able to access the autopsy report or have the ability to make changes."

"Do you think murder is a more likely possibility?"

"I don't know," Audrey said shaking her head slowly. "It's hard to believe that he was murdered and that it was covered up. Jack's best friend was right there when the whole thing unfolded. I can't imagine why he would want to cover up a murder. I don't know Tony well, but I do know that he has a pretty volatile temper. If he thought that the Secret Service agent intentionally killed Jack, I think he would have tried to kill the guy or at a minimum, he wouldn't have been involved in covering it up."

"Does this friend of Bauer's have anything to hide?"

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said. Does he have anything to hide? Could the Secret Service agent have blackmailed him or even paid him off to be quiet? Was he in debt? People in desperate need of money will do a lot of things to get the money. Maybe he figured that Jack was dead; he couldn't do anything about that but if all he had to do was say that the death was an accident, he could wipe out his financial woes."

"It doesn't sound right, but I guess anything is possible, Heath. How could we prove your theory?"

"We need to get a court order to exhume the body."

"Can't do it. Jack was cremated."

"Then there's no going back and looking again. You could talk to the ME who did the autopsy. He might remember, but then again, this is several months ago. He does a whole lot of autopsies. Unless there was something strange that stuck with him, he might not even remember this one autopsy in particular."

"So what you're saying is that I've hit a dead end."

"I'm sorry, but yes. I can't tell you any more without examining a body."

"Do you agree that something has been covered up?"

"Yes, obviously something has been covered up, but we don't know what it is. You know, Audrey, we're making a big conspiracy out of this, but it could boil down to something very simple."

"Like what?"

"Like a new transcriptionist typed the dictated autopsy report and made a lot of mistakes. Maybe she's been making a lot of mistakes and is at risk to lose her job. Somebody feels sorry for her and goes back and makes a bunch of corrections and then wipes out any record of it so she won't get fired."

"Somebody with the computer skill to wipe out all trace of any edits? That's a bit far fetched, Heath. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure those edits weren't retrievable and I don't think they were just protecting an incompetent transcriptionist. I think I need to bring my father into the loop on this or maybe the CTU director since the shooting took place at his facility. "

Heath shrugged. "Look, Audrey, it may sound far fetched to you, but I've worked for the government for long enough to know that people do some strange things. Before you go off half cocked with some conspiracy theory and force an inquiry, think long and hard about it. I'd hate to see you make a fool of yourself or hurt the people close to Bauer. I'm not sure this is as sinister as you might think it is. You've got an emotional tie to this case, I can tell. Would you like to tell me about it?"

Audrey's eyes filled with tears. "After Paul and I separated, I started seeing Jack on a regular basis. We didn't want people to know that we were dating, so we kept it pretty quiet. Even my father didn't know until just before Jack was killed."

"I'm sorry, Audrey," Heath told her gently. "All this time I thought you were grieving for Paul."

"So does everyone else," she said as she wiped tears away with a tissue Heath offered her. "Do you understand now why it's so important that I know what happened that night? I owe Jack that much."

"Maybe so, but I'd tread lightly until you've got a lot more proof," Heath advised her.

"I don't know where to go from here," Audrey admitted.

"I'm probably the wrong guy to give you any advice, but if it were me, I'd follow the money."

"What?"

"Follow the money. If this has to do with insurance money or paying someone off for their silence, money had to change hands somewhere. Eventually whoever got the money is going to start spending it. I mean, what fun is money if you can't spend it? So keep an eye on them for a while and wait for them to tip their hand."

"That's an interesting theory," Audrey agreed. For the first time that day she felt like she was getting somewhere. Maybe this wasn't a dead end after all. But by the same token, waiting for Tony or Michelle or Chloe to tip their hand, as Heath suggested, could take time. None of them was stupid. They knew better than to start spending money that they couldn't account for. Unfortunately, she didn't have much choice but to sit and wait. She didn't have any other leads and there wasn't enough evidence to force an investigation. "Thanks, Heath," she said giving him a hug. "You've been a big help."


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: This chapter is where the season 5 prequel found on the season 4 DVD set will come into play. Again, if you have access to it, it might help you to watch it. If not, I think I've provided enough detail for you to understand. Thanks again for the reviews. I hope you'll keep reading. _

Chapter 3

Audrey got up the next morning after a surprisingly good night's sleep. She had been so tired the night before that she literally collapsed into bed at just after 10 o'clock and didn't wake up until her alarm went off at 5:45. She showered and dressed and drove to work all the while planning her next move. After taking care of some pressing issues right after getting to the office, Audrey stepped out of her office and down to the IT department. Dean was on the phone when he saw Audrey approach his door and he waved her in. Audrey closed the door as she entered the office.

Dean hung up the phone and turned to his radio. Air Supply was singing "All Out of Love", a tune Audrey hadn't heard in at least 25 years. Dean turned down the volume a little and looked at Audrey. "What can I do for you?" he asked getting right to the point.

"I talked to someone last night about the edits on the autopsy report. He thought there were a couple of possibilities as to why the report was edited, but that the whole thing was probably not as bad as I was making it out to be." Audrey explained. "He thought that the motive might be money, possibly an insurance pay out to survivors. I don't know that we need to do much more about it; the only thing I want to make sure of is that there weren't any unusual sums of money paid to certain people." She handed him a half sheet of paper. "Here are the people we need to look into. I have their names and contact information." The paper had the names of Kim Bauer, Chloe, Tony and Michelle. "I know you shouldn't be looking at people's tax returns and bank accounts, but can you take a look at a couple of people and make sure there aren't any suspicious transactions?"

"That's spying, Mrs. Raines. You need to talk to the CIA about that one. We work for DoD, remember?"

"I know, Dean. I just don't know who else to turn to. If money was paid out to certain people in order to cover up something with regards to Jack's death, then they deserve to be caught."

Dean shook his head. "I'm not comfortable with this, Mrs. Raines. If there needs to be a full scale investigation of Mr. Bauer's death, then someone needs to order it. The parties involved need to be subpoenaed and their finances can be reviewed. I could lose my job for going into people's personal finances without due cause."

"I promise that I'll protect you, Dean. You have my word on it."

Dean smiled a shy smile. "I like you, Mrs. Raines. I like you a lot and I can see that you're passionate about this subject, but this is my livelihood. You are a political appointee. You're here for a term or two and then you're gone. The Secretary of Defense serves at the will of the President. If Charles Logan decides that he can't get along with your father, he forces James Heller to resign and he appoints a new Secretary of Defense. At that point you're no longer in the picture. I'm the one who has been working here since I was 25 and plan to retire from here when I'm 70. I can't afford to get caught looking into the finances of American citizens when there is no clear cut evidence of wrongdoing. I'm sorry, Mrs. Raines, but I can't help you. Feel free to find someone else. I won't tell anyone that you approached me. I hope you find what you're looking for but I just can't help you."

Audrey nodded and looked at the floor, embarrassed by her own actions. Dean was right; she had no cause to do what she was doing. She had justified it in her mind because she was willing to do anything that would help her understand what had happened to Jack. "You're right, Dean. What I asked was wrong and I had no right to ask you to do something illegal. I need reevaluate what I've got and to take my concerns to the CIA if there's enough actionable evidence. I'll leave it to them to investigate further. I'm sorry. Thanks for bringing me back to reality. I think I got caught up in the cloak and dagger of it all. Maybe after I leave DoD I should apply for a job at the CIA," she said smiling to cover her embarrassment.

Dean smiled back at her. "It's okay. You're right. You got caught up in the moment. It just took a killjoy like me to ruin it for you."

Audrey went back to her office and sat down hard in her desk chair. _What was I thinking? I'm making myself crazy. This has to stop,_ she admonished herself mentally. _The findings of the inquiry committee were that Jack was accidentally killed while he tried to escape. I have to live with that,_ she told herself.

"I'm sorry, Jack," she whispered aloud. "I wanted it to be different, but it isn't. I have to accept that. Please don't be angry with me." Audrey closed her eyes for a second and took several deep breaths. There was a pile of work on her desk and she had meetings for the rest of the morning. It was time to put her life back together.

Audrey went to her 11 o'clock and noon meetings. It was 1:15 before she stopped by her office on her way to lunch to pick up her messages. "Any messages for me, Ellen," she asked her assistant.

"Only two that need to speak directly to you. One is your father. He needs the specs on the new helicopter that the army is developing. He has a General that is telling him that the original order is for more choppers than he signed off on. He said that he'd be out of the office from one o'clock to three o'clock. So don't call him back before that. The other is Dean Baranski from IT. He asked if you could stop by his office. He wouldn't elaborate."

"Thanks," she said. "I'll stop at IT and then I'm going to go grab lunch."

"You have a conference call at two. Don't forget," Ellen called after her.

Audrey took the elevator down to the first floor all the while wondering what Dean could possibly want to talk to her about. He didn't see her approach his door so she knocked lightly knowing that he would startle as he always did.

"M…Mrs. Raines," he stuttered as his heart rate returned to normal. "I found something that I think you need to see."

"What is it? I thought we agreed not to look at any financial records."

"I didn't. It's been bothering me since yesterday that I couldn't back trace that autopsy edit to its source. I decided to try another method and I was able to trace it back to a personal hard drive. The programmer probably didn't have time to build a wall to prevent me from tracing the source. Those things are hard as hell to build and they take forever. Anyway, when I found the name of the person doing the editing, I noticed that it was the same as one of the people on your list of people whose finances you wanted me to look into."

"Who is it?" 

"A CTU programmer named Chloe O'Brian."

Audrey smiled. "I suspected Chloe. She's very talented and she's very loyal to Jack. I'm sure she was trying to cover up anything that could have made him look bad." Audrey was thinking about Heath's suggestion that the edit was made to cover up a suicide. Chloe would definitely want that to be covered up and kept from Kim.

"I'm not so sure that's all it is, Mrs. Raines. Once I found this, I did a little more snooping than I should have. I have to admit that you've got my curiosity piqued. I didn't check banking records because those are a little harder to get into, but I did check phone records. Chloe O'Brian has been in somewhat regular contact with an undercover CIA agent living in Chicago. His name is Vince Harding. I hacked into O'Brian's personnel file. She was apparently on loan to CTU Chicago for six months a couple of years ago. She only ended up staying there about three months and both she and Harding have reprimands on their records for the day she was send back to LA. I'm going to assume that they had some sort of personal relationship that was interfering with work. She went back to LA and they haven't had any contact that I can document on either personal or government phones or computers since then. Chloe first reconnected with Vince two days after Jack Bauer was killed. In the ensuing 12 months she's talked to him three times."

"That may mean nothing. She might just be looking to rekindle an old romance."

"Vince Harding is married now. He's got an eight month old baby. Doesn't it seem strange that she's trying to rekindle a romance with a married man? Whatever Chloe is trying to cover up, Vince Harding is in on it."

"I think you're right. Now the question is: What do we do about it?"

"I'm not finished, Mrs. Raines. There's more. Someone else is also interested in back tracing the source of the edits on Bauer's autopsy. When I was trying to trace the source, I found evidence that someone else was doing the same thing. He's good. I couldn't figure out who he was nor could I back trace to his computer, but I can tell that he was looking at the edits."

"Do you think he traced the source back to Chloe?"

"I'm sure he did. He obviously knows what he's doing and I can't imagine that he wasn't able to trace straight back to Chloe."

"Can Chloe or whoever else is interested in Jack's autopsy trace this back to you?"

"Not a chance. I did it the right way and put a wall in place as I was going along. You can't trace any of my steps. I'm pretty much invisible."

"Good work, Dean. Any idea what it means?"

"None, but I'm going to keep an eye on Chloe O'Brian and see if we can get any more information."

"Let me know if you do."

Audrey went back to her office and tried to concentrate. She sat numbly through her conference calls and couldn't wait for the day to be over. Whatever the mystery surrounding Jack's death, it seemed to be wrapped in layers. Every time one layer was peeled back another one was there to replace it. Nothing had a simple explanation and no question was easily answered. Audrey was at a total loss, but one thing was clear. Chloe O'Brian was key to the whole thing. She would have to make Chloe talk and that might not be so easy. If she had any chance of succeeding, she needed to talk to Chloe face to face. A phone conversation wouldn't work. She also needed to take her by surprise. If she had any warning that Audrey was coming to see her, she would have time to create a cover story. Finally, Audrey decided that she also needed some leverage. She needed to find something that she could hold over Chloe's head. Since Dean had already accessed her personnel files, she might try and find something there to use against her. Chloe had pulled plenty of crazy stunts over the years that CTU directors were forced to ignore because of her ability to make computers do things that no one else could make them do. Any one of those stunts could potentially be held against her. Audrey hated the idea of playing hardball with Chloe but decided that it was her only option.

The next two weeks flew by. Audrey's work schedule was full and her days were busy. She was out of the country for 4 days and she spent another 4 shuttling between military bases on the east coast assessing readiness. The two weeks were gone before she knew it and she hadn't even had time to start planning a trip to Los Angeles or to figure out what kind of leverage she was going to hold against Chloe.

It was late on a Thursday afternoon when Audrey got another call from Dean Baranski. She knew Dean never left his desk before six or seven o'clock in the evening, so she waited until then to go and see him. She knocked lightly on the door and, as usual, he startled.

"What have to got for me, Dean," Audrey asked.

"I don't know that this is important, Mrs. Raines, but I thought I'd show it to you. I told you that I'd keep tabs on Chloe O'Brian. Well, today she bought a round trip ticket from LA to Chicago. She'll arrive at O'Hare at 1:50 this Saturday afternoon and return to LA on a 7:15pm fight."

"So, she's flying into Chicago for about five-and-a-half hours?"

"That's what it looks like. If it were during the week, I'd think she was going to some kind of business meeting, but not on a Saturday. Anyway, I searched the database to see if CTU or any related agencies had meetings planned in Chicago that day and no one does."

"Did she rent a car?"

"Yes, she rented through a local agency in Chicago. If she were on government business presumably she'd rent a car through one of the government contracts. She's going to Chicago for personal reasons."

"Can you tell if there's any family in Chicago?"

"From what I can tell, she has no contacts in Chicago except for Vince Harding and according to phone logs she hasn't talked to him in several weeks. I also checked the other names on that list you gave me to see if anyone else was going to Chicago and none of them is."

"This is getting weirder and weirder," Audrey said shaking her head. "I'm not even sure what to do with this information. It could be nothing or it could be something."

"That's why I decided to pass it on to you. I didn't know what it meant either but if it's important then I wanted you to know about it."

"Thanks, Dean. If you find anything else, let me know."

"Certainly, Mrs. Raines," he said politely.

Audrey left Dean's office and quickly headed back to her own. She knew that she was acting on pure emotion and that nothing that she was about to do made any logical sense, but she was going to do it anyway. She sat down at her desk and began looking at flight schedules to Chicago. Chloe was going to arrive at 1:50; Audrey planned to be there when she arrived.

With the flight booked, Audrey sat back to figure out what she was going to do once she got to Chicago. She couldn't just walk up to Chloe in the airport and ask her what she was doing there. No, that definitely wouldn't work. She needed to be invisible. The idea of following someone was creepy to Audrey and made her feel like a stalker, but what were the alternatives? She just had to figure out how she was going to do it. She wasn't sure how much training Chloe had in field work. Obviously that wasn't her focus, but most CTU agents, even computer analysts, got some training in case they had to work from a mobile unit in the field. Would she have been given enough training to spot a tail? Audrey hoped not because she certainly wasn't trained in the fine art of being an invisible tail.

Audrey drove home that evening still pondering how to best follow Chloe around Chicago without being noticed. She was pulling into her driveway when the solution to the problem hit her. As she opened the garage door, light from the now setting sun glinted off of the back wall of the garage causing Audrey to laugh out loud. It wasn't anything new. It had been sitting there are for the last ten years. It was her motorcycle.

Although she seemed an unlikely person to ride a motorcycle, it was a favorite hobby of hers. When she first met Paul Raines almost 12 years earlier, he was seriously into motorcycle racing. She found the sport exciting. It was one of the things that she found interesting about Paul. Soon after they started dating, Paul taught Audrey to ride. She wasn't interested in doing any racing as Paul had hoped, but she quickly became an avid rider. Their first summer together, just before Audrey started her last year of college, the two rode cross country on their bikes. Jim and Susan Heller were livid. They hadn't liked Paul, who was almost ten years older than Audrey and who they saw as a bad influence on her. Now that she was older she could understand their feelings but at the time their concern and anger seemed overblown.

The two months she and Paul spent exploring the country cemented their relationship and by the time she went back to college that fall she was already planning their wedding in her mind. For the first few years of their marriage, the two rode regularly taking both weekend trips and long vacations on the backs of their bikes. Later, their busy schedules got in the way of both their hobby and their marriage and they began to drift apart. By the time they separated, Audrey hadn't ridden her bike in well over a year. She didn't start riding again until she started seeing Jack. He was fascinated and more than a little turned on by Audrey's love of motorcycles. He, too, had done some motorcycle racing when he was young but gave it up when the responsibilities of job and family became more pressing. He eagerly bought a new bike just a few weeks after their relationship began and the two of them started taking off on the weekends for little known and out of the way places where they could spend time together and not risk running into people who knew them.

Audrey stood in the garage and looked at the motorcycle that she hadn't ridden since the week before Jack was killed. That was the answer. She would rent a motorcycle in Chicago. If she wore a biker's jacket and tucked her hair into her helmet, no one would ever recognize her. On top of that, Audrey knew that motorcycles tended to be almost invisible to automobile drivers. That was one of the reasons that riding a bike could be so dangerous. Unless the motorcycle rider was doing something careless or reckless, a driver in a car barely noticed them. Even someone as inexpert as Audrey could tail Chloe without her ever noticing.

Saturday morning arrived and brought with it an adrenaline rush that Audrey couldn't shake. Her pulse bounded as she boarded the plane at Reagan National airport. It continued to race all through the flight as she reviewed her timetable in her head. As soon as the plane landed, Audrey picked up her small carry on bag that contained her riding jacket and helmet and strode into the terminal. Before long she was in front of the airport hailing one of the dozens of yellow taxi cabs that sat waiting for arriving passengers who needed transportation into the city.

Audrey slipped into the back of the cab and gave the driver the address of the motorcycle rental shop. The ride was longer than she had anticipated. She glanced repeatedly at her watch doing mental calculations and adjusting her timetable. Despite the longer than expected ride to the bike shop, she remained confident that she would still be able to catch up with Chloe.

The driver pulled up to the bike shop just as Audrey finished her calculations. She paid him and went inside. The bike was waiting for her. It was sleek and good looking. She couldn't wait to get on it and see how it handled.

After completing the paperwork and handing over her credit card as payment, Audrey went into the ladies room, pulled the jacket out of her bag and put it on. She had worn a pair of jeans and old leather boots that weren't exactly the best for riding, but they would do in a pinch. After donning the jacket, Audrey stepped in front of a mirror and pulled her hair up on top of her head. With her helmet under one arm and her bag in the other hand, Audrey exited the ladies' room and made her way to the parking lot where the bike sat waiting for her.

If she was experiencing adrenaline rush earlier, it was practically killing her now. Audrey could feel her heart throbbing in her throat as she tucked her bag into the small storage compartment and strapped on her helmet. Now with the helmet with a shaded visor covering her face and the jacket over her clothing making her look bulkier than she was, it was impossible to tell if she was a man or woman. If anything could give it away, it was the boots which were decidedly female. Audrey would just have to hope that no one was looking at her feet.

She looked at her watch for what felt like the thousandth time that day. Chloe's plane was just about to land. Audrey assumed that Chloe would then head for the terminal and get a cab or a shuttle to the car rental company where she had reserved a car. If it went smoothly, all of that should take under a half hour. Considering the distance from the motorcycle rental back to that location, it was going to take Audrey every bit of a half hour to get there. She was going to have to hurry. She straddled the bike and quickly familiarized herself with the controls. The bike started smoothly and Audrey took a couple of turns around the parking lot to get the feel of it before taking it onto the road. Once on the road, she headed back toward the airport at the fastest speed reasonable on city roads.

It was a good day for riding and Audrey wished that she could enjoy it, but the overwhelming sense of urgency and her focus on the task at hand took any enjoyment out of it. As she turned into the street where the car rental was located, she cut her speed. There was a bank across the street with a small, empty parking lot. Audrey pulled the bike into the parking lot and in the shade of an oak tree to make herself less noticeable.

As she parked and killed the engine, an airport shuttle bus pulled up in front of the rental agency and deposited several passengers. The angle at which the shuttle bus had parked prevented Audrey from getting a good look at the passengers. She would just have to be patient and wait for them to come out one at a time, keys in hand and go to their cars.

Audrey's patience paid off. She watched as two men came from the agency and went to their individual cars. The next person out was a woman. Audrey knew her immediately. It was Chloe. Chloe had a strange air about her in the best of times, but today she was obviously nervous. She looked anxiously about before getting into the car. Audrey knew that she was checking to see if anyone was following her. She must have decided that it was safe to proceed because she unlocked the car and got behind the wheel.

Audrey waited for Chloe to pull out. The car was cobalt blue and would be easy to spot. Once Chloe was half way down the block, Audrey started her bike and pulled out onto the road. She followed Chloe through what seemed to be a circuitous route through the city. Paul Raines had done a lot of business in Chicago and Audrey knew the city pretty well. Either Chloe was lost or someone had given her this route to take to avoid being tailed. She finally ended up heading into a rough section of the city. Audrey stayed well behind her but had her constantly in view. She slowed down as Chloe did and pulled the bike to the side of a nearby building. Nothing indicated to her that Chloe had noticed her following.

Audrey watched as Chloe got out of the car and anxiously looked around. She wasn't sure if Chloe was still trying to gauge whether she had been followed or whether she was just looking around to make sure that she was safe in what obviously was not an area where a woman wanted to be walking alone even during daylight hours. She looked briefly at a slip of paper apparently checking an address and then moved forward toward a chain link fence behind which several 18-wheeled trucks were parked. She walked confidently but with an air of suspicion. Suddenly a person stepped from behind a truck, reached out and grabbed her.

Audrey's heart pounded harder than she thought possible. What should she do now? Was Chloe in trouble? Should she try and help her. As she watched, she noticed that there was no sign of struggle. She could see two pairs of feet under the truck: one set was Chloe's, while the other pair belonged to a man. Audrey relaxed a bit realizing that Chloe was meeting someone and that she was not in danger. Chloe was behind the truck less than a minute when she started to walk back toward her car. She stopped and turned around as the person she was with obviously called her back for one more quick exchange. Chloe continued to walk back to her rental car and pulled away.

Audrey debated what to do next. Should she follow Chloe or wait and see who came out from behind the truck. She decided that it was best to wait. Chloe was probably not going anywhere important from here before she went back to the airport. She would probably drive around some and get lunch or shop. All of that would just be a cover to make her coming to and leaving Chicago in just a few hours look less unusual. No, rather than follow Chloe, Audrey would wait to see who emerged from behind the truck.

She backed further into the shadows and watched as a long haired man in a hooded sweatshirt and dark jeans exited through the break in the fence and walked toward a white Toyota. She couldn't see his face, but she knew immediately from the way he walked and the way he carried himself who he was. She gasped. It was impossible. He was dead. She had been at CTU when his body was removed. She had been at the cemetery when his ashes were interred. Jack Bauer was dead; she was sure of that. Now as she looked down a vacant alley in a bad section of Chicago, she watched Jack Bauer saunter warily along.

It suddenly occurred to Audrey that she was imagining things. She so wanted Jack to be alive that she was imagining that he was. She decided to follow the man as he went to his car. She started the bike and knew immediately that he noted her presence. In order not to look suspicious, she drove the bike down the alley past him. As she did, he turned his head a fraction so that she got a look at him.

That was it. Now she knew for sure. The long haired man in the hoodie was Jack. She turned the bike around so that she was facing Jack's car from the opposite side of the street. She wanted to get off of the bike and go to him, but could see even through the windshield that he was watching her closely. She didn't know if he was armed but suspected that he was. If she got off the bike there was a chance that he would read the movement as hostile and open fire. She needed to approach him carefully.

Audrey had just decided to take off her helmet so that Jack could see who she was when a black BMW skidded around the corner and directly toward Jack's car. Audrey screamed his name but knew that there was no one there to hear her. She watched in horror as Jack threw the car in reverse and backed at high speed down the alley with the BMW in hot pursuit. She didn't know what else to do, so she followed the two cars at a safe distance. She knew that Jack was well trained in evasive driving and she hoped that he could get out of this unscathed. She wasn't sure exactly how the chase ended since the two cars were out of her sight when she heard the crash. Audrey held her breath as she pulled around to the side street to see which, if either, of the cars emerged. She let the breath out as she saw Jack's white Toyota pull out from behind a construction site and onto the road. She waited at the corner for a few seconds while Jack drove away. He was spooked right now and there was no way that she could safely approach him. Instead, she decided to follow him and see where he would lead her.

If Audrey thought that she had the wherewithal to tail Jack Bauer, she sadly mistaken. He knew that he was being followed and it took him only four quick turns and a u-turn onto a highway entrance ramp to lose her. By the time Audrey recovered from the u-turn and got onto the busy highway, Jack was lost in a sea of heavy Saturday traffic; his white Toyota swallowed and invisible. Audrey cursed herself for not even memorizing his license plate. At least then she could have gotten his assumed name and address from the department of motor vehicles. Of course, it was likely that, if the car was even registered, that Jack had given the address of some parking lot or public building.

Audrey gave up the pursuit and took the next exit ramp off of the highway. She needed to park the bike for a few minutes and think about all that had just happened if she was going to logically figure out what to do next. A few blocks off of the highway, she found a park where she could grab a hot dog from a vendor and sit for a moment.

Her first thoughts when she sat down under a shade tree were of Jack. How had they done it? How had they staged his death and gotten Jack out of CTU? It was clear that Chloe, Tony and Michelle were all involved. Audrey wondered how many others were also in on it. Bill Buchanan? Curtis Manning? Did Kim know that her father was alive? It all started to make sense. The edits that Chloe made to Jack's autopsy were to cover up the fact that the body at the medical examiner's office belonged to someone else. Now she understood why they were all so secretive. If the government found out what they had done, they would have all gone to prison. If the Chinese figured it out, they would start looking for Jack.

That led to more questions. Who was driving the black BMW? Whoever it was, their intention was to kill Jack. That part was clear. Was the person in the BMW the same one who had been looking at Jack's autopsy report? Dean couldn't trace that back to a source so they had no idea who had stumbled onto Jack's secret and was now after him. Whoever they were, they weren't going to give up at this point. Did that put Chloe in any danger? Would they go after her and either use her as leverage to bring Jack out of hiding or torture her to get information about Jack? Was Kim safe? The quickest way to Jack was through Kim. Audrey knew that Kim was one of Jack's few weak spots. If the person chasing him knew that, then Kim could be in grave danger.

Audrey was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. She was now privy to a dangerous secret and she didn't know who to turn to or how to protect those that were now in danger. Her first thought was to call Chloe, but she couldn't. It was likely that Chloe's calls were being monitored. If Audrey called, that might lead Jack's pursuer back to her. Maybe she should call Buchanan, but he, too, was an unknown. She didn't know a lot about Bill and feared that he might be on either side of this mystery. He might have helped in Jack's escape or he might be working with whoever was after Jack or, the third possibility, Bill could be entirely neutral and simply assume that Jack was dead. If Buchanan didn't know that Jack was alive and she contacted him, he might have the involved parties arrested and have the government begin pursuing Jack. She didn't want any of that to happen. No, Buchanan was not the right person to contact.

After much thought, Audrey decided that her best bet was to go back to the airport and catch Chloe before she headed back to LA. Together they could decide how best to act. With that decision made, Audrey felt much better. She finished her hot dog and diet soda and hopped back onto her bike. She would return it, take a cab back to the airport and hopefully, find Chloe waiting for her 7:15 return flight to LA.

It was almost five o'clock by the time Audrey got back to the airport. She checked the departure board and found that Chloe's flight was listed as being "on time". That meant that she had about two hours to find Chloe in one of the busiest airports in the world. For all she knew, Chloe hadn't even returned to the airport yet. Audrey decided that her best chance to find Chloe was to wait for her at the departure gate. That was a problem. Audrey's flight was leaving from a different concourse than Chloe's. Only ticketed passengers could pass the security screen at a particular concourse. Audrey didn't have any way of getting to the gate from which Chloe would be boarding. She stood staring at the security queue wondering if her DoD credentials would help, but put that thought out of her head as quickly as it had come in. Pulling out DoD credentials and trying to bully the security guards was going to attract attention. She couldn't afford to do that.

Audrey sighed. She had only two choices. She could either buy a ticket to a flight leaving from the same concourse as Chloe or she could wait some distance form the security entrance to the concourse and hope that she would see Chloe as she got in line. It was possible that Chloe was already passed security and had gone to her gate early, but with two hours to spare, Audrey thought that unlikely. She decided to buy a book or magazine at the newsstand across from security and wait on a nearby bench. From there she would have a full view of the security queue. If she didn't see Chloe within a half hour of her flight leaving, Audrey would have to assume that Chloe had already gone to the gate. At that point, she would buy a ticket on whatever available flight would give her access to that gate. Buying a one way ticket was a risky thing especially if done at the last minute by someone not carrying any luggage. Airlines red flagged passengers with one way tickets and no luggage. That was how terrorists traveled. She could explain it away somehow, but again she didn't want to call any attention to herself. Audrey pushed the thought to the back of her mind. She would do what she had to do to protect Jack. Yes, she also needed to warn Chloe, but her overriding goal in all of this was to protect Jack. And she had decided that the only way to do that was to get her father to pull enough strings to set Jack up some place safe, with a foolproof new identity and hopefully, herself by his side.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Audrey sat on a bench near the security queue pretending to read the newspaper. She feigned interest in the cover story and regularly glanced over the paper to watch the passengers approaching the security screening area. It was almost an hour before she spotted Chloe buying a cup of coffee from a gourmet coffee kiosk.

Audrey quickly folded her newspaper and stuffed it in her carry on. In the same motion, she stood and started to walk toward Chloe. It worked well. Chloe was waiting for the kid behind the counter to make a low fat vanilla latte when Audrey came up behind her.

"So, Chloe, what are you doing in Chicago?" Audrey asked quietly.

Chloe turned surprised to see Audrey. "Just visiting someone. What are you doing here?"

Audrey stepped up to the counter. "A large iced decaf chocolate latte, please. I'll pay for hers and mine," she said to the girl. Then she turned to Chloe. "Who are you visiting?"

"That's kind of personal, Audrey. I don't think it's any of your business," Chloe replied in an annoyed tone as she started to walk away. "But thanks for the coffee."

"I think it _is_ my business. I saw him, Chloe."

Chloe stood stunned and unspeaking. "It was you on the computer?"

"Yes and no. Let me get my coffee and we'll go somewhere where we can talk."

The two walked away from the crowded shopping area and toward some empty tables near the far end of a food court. "I was on the computer and I know that it was you that edited hisautopsy report," Audrey said unsure if it was safe to say Jack's name out loud. "But there was also somebody else and I think whoever it is wants him dead." Audrey went on to tell Chloe about the black BMW. "I think you have to consider yourself a target, too," Audrey told her. "I'm also worried about Kim."

"I arranged surveillance for Kim a long time ago. She's safe. Don't worry about me. I'm watching my back," Chloe said.

"Really? Then how did I manage to follow you around Chicago without you knowing about it?"

"Let me worry about that," Chloe said conceding that she might just be in some danger, too.

"What happens now?" Audrey said letting the subject of Chloe's safety drop. She didn't want anything bad to happen to Chloe, but by the same token, Chloe wasn't her primary concern. "He'sgot to get out of town."

"Heknows that. I wanted to help, but he said he could handle it. He'll get in touch with me when it's safe."

"How long will that be?"

Chloe shrugged. "It could be months. It depends on when hethinks it's safe."

"Are you telling me you have no way of getting in touch with him?" Audrey asked incredulously.

"Not while he's in transit. Once he settles down, he'll let me know."

"Where do you think he'll go next?"

"I have no idea, Audrey!" Chloe said in a frantic whisper. "Why do you care? You dumped him before he escaped anyway."

Audrey looked down at the floor, clearly embarrassed. "Is that what he told you?"

"Not in so many words. When we were planning his escape I asked him if he wanted you to know. He said that things weren't working out between you two. It was pretty obvious that day that you couldn't really deal with who he was when he was in the field." Chloe said bluntly.

Audrey acted as if she was ignoring the comment but in truth it had been like a knife in her heart. "So, I take it that it was his decision to keep me in the dark and make me think that he was dead."

"He thought it would be better that way. It gave you the chance to move on."

"I made a mistake that day, Chloe and I've regretted it ever since. I love him. That day was just so emotional that I lost it. I took it out on him and I shouldn't have. I want to have the chance to tell him that."

"That's sweet, Audrey. Next time he contacts me I'll be sure to pass that on to him," Chloe said sarcastically. "Thanks again for the coffee," she said as she stood up.

Audrey stood and reached for her arm. "Wait!" she said anxiously. "We're not finished."

"I have a plane to catch."

"You have at least 50 minutes and the security queue is short," Audrey said coolly. "I'm here to help Jack just like you are," she told Chloe finally daring to say Jack's name. "He can't keep running like this. I'm going to talk to my father."

"That's a nice gesture, but what is your father going to do? Can he get the Chinese off Jack's back?"

"Probably not," Audrey admitted. "But he knows enough people in high places to get things done. He can arrange to get a new identity for Jack, a foolproof one. Then they can arrange for him to live some place safe instead of on the street. Maybe they can use him as an undercover operative or whatever, but he'll have a decent life. He won't be on the streets and living day to day. How does he keep himself going? Where does he get money? Does he work?"

"Jack can take care of himself, Audrey. He doesn't need your help."

"That's why he almost got killed today. I was there, Chloe. I saw how close that BMW came to killing him. The next time he might not be so lucky. Can't you try and get in touch with him again here in Chicago? If we can get to him now, maybe we can arrange to get him to a government safe house for a while until something more permanent can be set up."

"You really don't know him very well do you?" Chloe said with an exasperated laugh. "He's not still living where he was this morning. He's already vanished. He might be on a bus or maybe he hopped a train or he might be hitching a ride on one of those transport trucks. He's gone by now, Audrey, and all we can do is wait for him to contact us."

Audrey nodded. She knew that Chloe was right. "Will you do me a favor?"

"Maybe."

"Will you call me on a secure line at DoD as soon as he gets in touch with you? I'll talk to my father tonight and see if he can get the ball rolling. That way, when Jack calls you we can have all the arrangements made to relocate him."

"This isn't what Jack would want. He never wanted you involved."

"Really? I'm not so sure that's true. Is it Jack who wouldn't want me involved or is it you who doesn't want me involved?" Audrey asked pointedly. She had known for a long time how Chloe felt about Jack. "Look, Chloe, right now we both have to be on the same team. We both care about Jack and our goal should be to get him to some place safe where he can live a decent life. Don't you want that for him?"

Chloe reluctantly nodded. "Do you plan for that life to include you?"

Audrey smiled. "I'd like it to, but that would have to be Jack's decision. I said some pretty ugly things to him the last time we were together. I'm not sure how forgiving he'll be or even how forgiving he should be. I told you before, I want to have the chance to apologize and set the record straight. Beyond that I won't ask him for anything else. Please, Chloe, this isn't about Jack and me. It's just about Jack and what's best for him. Promise me that you'll call me when Jack gets in touch with you."

"Okay," Chloe said giving in. "What do you want me to tell him when he calls?"

"Don't tell him anything. Just find out how to get in touch with him and then call me. I'll take care of it from there. If I can get you any information in advance, I'll call you from DoD, but I don't think we should talk on anything but a secure line."

Chloe nodded. "Okay, when he contacts me, I'll let you know." She looked at her watch. "I've got to go. I'll be in touch."

"Thank you, Chloe," Audrey said sincerely. She watched as Chloe passed through the security check point and disappeared into the crowd of passengers on the concourse. Then she finished her latte, dropped the cup into the nearby trash and headed toward the gate for her flight home.

Audrey was exhausted by the time her plane landed at Reagan National Airport. She took her carry on bag and headed to the parking lot. As she walked, she pulled out her phone and called her father.

"Hi, Dad," she said as he answered. "What are you doing this evening?"

"Evening? It's almost 11 o'clock, Audrey. It's night in my book."

"Ok, what are you doing tonight?"

"I'm getting ready to go to bed."

"Alone?"

"Of course, alone! Who did you think would be here?"

"You've been spending a lot of time with Nancy these days. I thought maybe things were getting a little more serious."

Without really meaning to, Audrey could tell that she struck a nerve. Her father was very old fashioned and, although, she was sure that he his relationship with Nancy Aiello, an editor for the Washington Times, had become intimate at least a few weeks ago, she knew that he would never admit that to her. "I don't ask who you spend your nights with. Maybe you should afford me the same courtesy."

"Look, Dad, I didn't call to intrude on your personal life. I like Nancy and, frankly, I'd be happy to see you get more involved with her. You need something besides work and me in your life. I just wanted to know if you were alone. I need to talk to you."

Jim's tone changed instantly from one of guilty anger to that of the concerned father. "Are you alright, Audrey?"

"I'm fine, Dad, don't worry about me. But I have to talk to you tonight. Can I come over?"

"Of course. What's this about, sweetheart?"

"I can't tell you over the phone. I'll be there in about a half an hour."

"Do you want me to put on a pot of coffee?"

"Only if you're planning to put something a lot stronger in it!" Audrey said chuckling ruefully. "Seriously, don't put coffee on. I need a drink."

"If you're drinking then plan to stay here tonight."

"Fine. I'm too tired to argue. I'll see you in a little while," Audrey said before disconnecting.

She knew that she shouldn't have done that. She knew that her father was going to worry until she got there. She knew what he was like. He'd pace his study with a brandy snifter in his hand imagining all of the possible horrible things she was going to tell him. Her father's imagination was his own worst enemy. She felt guilty making him worry for the next 30 minutes but it couldn't be helped.

As Audrey expected, her father was waiting for her at the front door when she pulled into the driveway. She hadn't even put her foot on the porch when Jim opened the door.

"Hi, Dad," she said hugging him. "Have you poured that drink yet?"

"Audrey, tell me what this is all about," her father demanded.

Audrey could tell that he was taking in her slightly disheveled appearance, something that was more than unusual for her. Without answering him she walked from the entrance straight to her father's study and opened the liquor cabinet. She upturned a clean brandy snifter and poured a generous amount into the clear crystal globe. She swirled the amber liquid in the glass and lifted it to her lips taking a long swallow and then closing her eyes as it washed down her throat leaving a burning sensation in its wake.

"Sit down," she told her father.

He eyed her suspiciously. "I'll stand," he answered as if to remind her who was in the position of authority in the family.

"No, Dad. Trust me. For this, you need to sit down. Please, humor me. Just sit down."

"You win, Audrey. I don't know what this is about, but if it requires me sitting down to get an answer, I'll do it." He sat in a leather chair and set his brandy snifter on the table next to it. "Are you happy now?"

Audrey took a second swallow of the brandy as if to steel herself for what she had to say. "Jack Bauer is alive."

"What?"

"You heard me. Jack is alive. His death was staged."

"You can't be serious," Jim said standing and walking toward her. "Look, sweetheart, I know how hard Jack's death has been on you, but you have to accept it. We went to his funeral. Jack is dead, Audrey."

"Believe me, Dad, he's not dead. Sit down and I'll tell you the story as I understand it. I don't have all of the details, but basically, what I know is that Jack escaped from CTU the night we thought he was killed. His death was a ruse. I think they gave him some kind of drug to make his heart rate slow down so he looked dead."

"Who is 'they'?" Jim asked.

"As best I can figure out, the people involved are Chloe O'Brian, Tony Almeida and Michelle Dessler. They helped Jack stage his death and escape from CTU."

"Who is buried in Jack's grave?"

"I have no idea. I'm not sure they even know. It could be some unidentified terrorist that was killed in the course of the day. So many were brought back to CTU that day that no one would have noticed if one body disappeared."

Jim was still stunned. "Audrey, are you sure about this? Could someone be playing some kind of trick on you?"

"I saw him today, Dad. I saw him with my own eyes. Jack's alive and he's in a lot of danger. Somebody wants him dead and we have to make sure that doesn't happen."

Audrey finally convinced her father to sit down and she told him the whole story beginning with her suspicions about Tony's testimony. It was almost two o'clock when she finished. She set down the brandy snifter that she was holding having never taken any more than those first two sips.

"We have to do something, Dad. Jack shouldn't be living the way he is. He worked for this country too long and too hard for him to have become a street person just to keep himself alive. There has to be a way to protect him. Maybe the CIA can place him somewhere and set up a new life for him. The problem is that he has to be untraceable. Whoever wants to kill him was able to trace him to Chicago and that wasn't all that easy to do. I had our best computer person on it and he couldn't back trace and figure out who was in Jack's autopsy file."

Jim nodded. "The CIA has ways of making an agent disappear that are untraceable. It isn't easy, but it can be done. I know who to call. The problem is getting them to agree to it."

"Why wouldn't they agree to it? Jack needs to be protected. He's a hero, Dad. Don't you see that?"

"I see it, Audrey, but I'm not sure that everyone else is going to agree with that assessment."

"Who would disagree?"

"Charles Logan. He's the president now, remember."

"Jack saved Logan's ass. He risked his life going into the Chinese embassy and getting Lee out. It was Lee's information that led Jack to Marwan. If Jack hadn't done that, we wouldn't be talking right now. That missile would have hit LA. We were in LA at the time. We both would have died. And Charles Logan would have had to explain to the American people how one of our own weapons was turned against us. He wouldn't have survived the political fall out."

"I understand that, Audrey, but the reality of it is a little bit different. The Chinese wanted someone to pay for their consulate's death. Logan needed to turn someone over to appease them. He needed a scapegoat. Jack was that person. So the problem now is that any kind of protection program we put Jack in would have to be signed off by Logan and I'm not sure we can get him to do that. For all we know, it's the Secret Service who found out that Jack is alive and they may be the ones after him now."

"I don't think so, Dad. I can't imagine some Secret Service agent driving a BMW trying to run Jack down. I think they'd be a little more discreet about it. I think a bullet from a sniper's rifle at long range is more their style."

"You're probably right, but that doesn't change the original problem," Jim sighed. "How do we get Logan to agree that Jack needs to be protected?" He shook his head as the grandfather's clock in the stairwell struck two. "I can't think about this any more tonight. I need to go to bed. We'll figure it out in the morning."

Audrey nodded in agreement. The two headed up the stairs and Audrey automatically turned into the room she had slept in throughout her teenage years. She still slept there occasionally and kept a minimum of clothes and toilet articles there for just such occasions.

"Good night, sweetheart," Jim Heller said to his daughter as he continued down the hall to his own room. He stopped short and turned back toward her. "Audrey, if we're able to move Jack into some sort of protection program, were you planning on going with him?"

"Chloe asked me the same thing. I'm going to tell you what I told her. Jack would have to want me to come with him. I can't force myself on him. I said some terrible things to Jack in LA. I blamed him for Paul's death and told him that I couldn't love him."

"You obviously feel differently now," her father noted.

"When I lashed out at Jack, what I didn't realize was that I was covering up my own guilt. Paul came to CTU when he heard that you and I were kidnapped. He did that because he still loved me. I had stopped loving Paul long before that. I stopped loving him even before I started seeing Jack. To be fair to him, I should have told him that and I should have filed for divorce. If I had, he wouldn't have come to CTU and gotten involved in the whole operation. It was my fault that Paul was put at risk, not Jack's. Jack did what he had to in the best interest of the country. I wasn't able to look at it objectively at the time, but I've had a year to think this through and now I understand why I reacted the way I did. Now, I only hope that Jack can forgive me for how I treated him and the things I said to him. If he wants me back, I'll gladly go with him, but I don't know how he feels about me after all that happened."

"You know that going with Jack means giving up everything, don't you?"

Audrey's tired eyes filled with tears. "The only thing I'd miss is you. I can give up the rest of it in a heartbeat."

Jim pulled Audrey into a tight embrace. She could feel him choke back a sob. "When I talk to the CIA about putting Jack in protection, I'll let them know that there's a possibility that you'll be with him," he said in a slightly wavering voice.

"Thank you, Dad," Audrey whispered through her own tears. "I love you."

"I love you, too, sweetheart."

Audrey awoke late the next morning. She felt good after her discussion with her father and a good night's sleep. After showering, she dressed in an old pair of jeans and a light cotton sweater that she kept in the closet. She felt refreshed for the first time in days.

As she descended the stairs, she could hear her father talking to someone on the phone in his study. She waved to him as she passed the door. She wanted to hear the conversation but knew that it was best if she just got herself some breakfast and waited for her father to tell her what, if any, progress he had made.

She was pouring coffee when Jim Heller came into the kitchen with his own empty coffee mug in hand. Audrey noticed that he looked grim.

"Should I say good morning?" Audrey asked as she watched him refill his cup.

"It'll work out, Audrey, I promise. It's just going to be more involved than I anticipated."

"How so?"

"I called Mike Novick this morning. I know that Mike was well acquainted with Jack from his days in David Palmer's administration. I wanted to get his opinion on whether or not I could expect Charles Logan to agree to placing Jack under government protection before I started to talk to the CIA about it."

"What did Mike think?"

"He told me not even to approach it with the CIA, because they can't go forward without an okay from the president. Mike said that not only would Logan not consider protecting Jack but that if Logan had any inkling that Jack was alive that he would order every police body in his purview to find him and bring him in as an enemy of the state."

Audrey looked horrified. "Mike won't tell Logan that Jack's alive, will he?" she asked frantically.

"Of course not, sweetheart," Jim said in a soothing tone. "Mike was happy to hear it. He likes Jack and he never wanted him to be turned over to the Chinese. He said that he'll help in any way he can, but it will have to be very behind the scenes. Logan can't know that Mike is in any way involved."

"So, did Mike have any suggestions as to where to turn next since Logan won't help us?"

"Yes, he did. He suggested that I get in touch with David Palmer. Mike said that David tried to protect Jack when Logan decided to turn him over to the Chinese but Logan dismissed him. He thinks that David might still have enough ties to pull this off without Logan ever knowing about it. I'll call David today and see if I can set up a meeting with him later this week."

"Is there anything we can do to get started before that?"

"No, right now we have to sit tight. I know the waiting is hard, Audrey, but we don't have a choice. Besides that, we don't even know where Jack is. Chloe said that it might be months before she hears from him. That may be a good thing, it might take months for us to arrange this, especially if it involves you going along with Jack," Jim added as he looked down at the floor.

"Let's not worry about me right now. I can be added on to the plan later if necessary. I just want to know that Jack is safe."

Jim Heller arranged to play golf with David Palmer that Friday afternoon. After golf, the two would have dinner at Jim's Maryland home. Audrey was meeting them there for dinner. It was then that they would discuss providing government protection for Jack. Both Jim and Audrey were sure that Palmer would want to help. The question that really needed to be answered was whether or not he could help them. Jim seemed optimistic but Audrey was less so. Palmer was an ex-president with a poor relationship with the current administration. She couldn't imagine him having any kind of pull that would result in government protection for Jack. As a result, Audrey fretted over the meeting all week.

Friday finally arrived and Audrey was grateful that her schedule that day was relatively light because she simply couldn't concentrate on anything. By three o'clock with all of her scheduled appointments finished, she feigned a headache and left for the day. Even driving home was a chore. Rush hour traffic was no worse than on any other Friday afternoon, but on this particular day Audrey was more annoyed than ever. She finally arrived home where she changed into more casual clothes and went back out into the rush hour madness to head over to her father's house.

Dinner was going to be simple. Audrey took steaks out of the refrigerator and marinated them. Her father would grill those when he got home. She had arranged with her father's Italian housekeeper, who also cooked for him, to make an antipasto salad, roasted garlic mashed potatoes and a steamed broccoli casserole (both of which Audrey could just heat up when it was time to eat) and an Italian brandy cream cake for dessert. She checked both the bar and the humidor to make sure they were well stocked.

Jim and David entered the house a little after seven arguing good-naturedly whether Jim had taken four or five strokes on the fifteenth hole. David was happy to see Audrey whom he had known for years.

"Audrey, how have you been?" he asked as he pulled her into a bear hug. It never ceased to amaze her how big the ex-president was. He was more than a head taller than her father and much broader.

The threesome made small talk before and during dinner with golf being the overriding theme of the conversation. Audrey could feel her nervousness rise as they moved from the dinner table, poured after dinner drinks and her father and the former president each took a cigar from the humidor. They sat on the patio enjoying the warm spring evening while they savored their cigars.

"David, there's something I'd like to talk to you about," Jim began. "I know you were very close to Jack Bauer."

David nodded solemnly. "Jack was a good man. He saved my life more than once and he saved this country more than once. I miss him."

Audrey watched him as he spoke. She noticed that he never made eye contact with her or her father when he talked about Jack. She was immediately convinced that he knew something.

Jim Heller spoke again. "This may come as a surprise, David, but there's no need for you to talk about Jack in the past tense. Audrey and I have just found out that he's alive."

"He's alive?" David said. He sounded surprised but Audrey couldn't be sure. "How can that be?"

Jim went on to explain what had transpired and all the while Audrey was sure that her father wasn't telling Palmer anything that he didn't already know. He only seemed to be paying close attention when Jim told him that Jack had been living in Chicago until recently and that he was forced to leave because someone was trying to kill him.

"In short, David," Jim continued. "I'd like to find a way to help Jack. I know we can't get him off the hook with the Chinese but there has to be some way to protect him. I'd like to contact the CIA, but I'm afraid that Charles Logan would refuse anything that I would propose related to protecting Jack." Jim neglected to mention that it was Mike Novick's idea to involve David.

Palmer nodded his agreement. "Keep Logan out of this. He'd rather kill Jack than protect him." Audrey and Jim exchanged glances. The anger in David Palmer's voice was unmistakable. "Don't involve the CIA just yet. I may have a way around both them and Logan. I'll make some phone calls tomorrow and see what I can come up with."

"David, I have no objection to putting this in your hands, but do you mind my asking what you're thinking. How are you going to keep the CIA out of this?" Jim asked.

"Right now I'm not sure who we can trust in the US government," David admitted. "It's well known that Logan and I don't get along and if I start making inquiries it's going to get back to Logan one way or another. He's got people looking out for him in every agency. You know full well, Jim, that Charles Logan is a master wheeler-dealer. He's made promises to more people than I can count as long as they watch his back."

"So who can you go to?" Audrey finally asked.

"I'm going to look overseas. I still have good relationships with the Prime Ministers of England and Israel. I'm hoping that I can arrange something with MI6 or the Mossad. The other possibility is Interpol. Any one of those agencies would do whatever it took to get an agent of Jack's caliber. They may be happy to go out on a limb and arrange protection for him. He's a valuable commodity in the intelligence community."

"I agree that he's a valuable commodity, David, but word of this can't get back to China or the US. He's got to be in a low profile position. He can't be out doing field work or he'll eventually be spotted," Jim warned.

"I'll make that clear to whatever agency I talk to. This has to be kept silent. But Jack would still be an asset for intelligence gathering and assessment."

"David," Jim started. "Before you go any further, I have to tell you that there is one potential problem."

"What would that be?"

"Audrey."

Palmer looked in her direction. "Audrey? How would you be a problem?"

"Before Jack escaped, he and I were seeing each other," Audrey explained. "That was a year ago, so I don't know how he feels at this point, but if he would agree, then I would want to be relocated with him."

David stared at her. "Putting a man that everyone believes is dead into a government protection program is hard, Audrey. But taking a high profile person such as yourself and making her disappear is nearly impossible. Do you have any idea what you're asking?"

"Yes, I do. I understand how difficult it could be. Right now my biggest concern is getting Jack some place safe. We can worry about me at a later date. For all I know, Jack may not want me to be anywhere near him," Audrey looked down for a moment. "I'm not proud of how I treated Jack the last time we saw each other. I wouldn't blame him if he said that he hated me. There are a lot of days when I hate myself."

"If I know Jack, he doesn't hate you," David said gently squeezing her hand. "Give me a few days. I have to get in touch with some people and make some quiet inquiries. I'll get back to you as soon as I have something."

Audrey felt buoyed by hope as she said good night to David and to her father and left the two of them smoking their cigars under a bright moon. She looked at the clear sky and hoped that wherever Jack was that his skies were clear and that maybe he was looking up at the moon just like she was.

Friday night's hopefulness was soon turned into the anxiety of waiting. With every day that passed without news from David Palmer, Audrey became surer and surer that he was unable to broker a deal with any of the intelligence agencies that he mentioned. It was Wednesday of the next week when Jim Heller innocently leaned into his daughter's office just after lunch.

"David Palmer and I are playing golf Friday and then having dinner at my house. Would you like to join us?"

Audrey smiled expectantly. "I'd love to," was all that she said.

Two nights later, she was having dinner and listening while David explained the plan. MI6 was more than happy to provide a new identity and protection for Jack if he was willing to work for them. They would set him up on a small farm in a rural area not terribly far from London. He would pose as the ne'er do well son of a wealthy American businessman whose lack of interest in the family business had resulted in a rift with his father. In order to distance himself from the overbearing man, he took his trust fund and bought the property in England where he could live and dabble in his interests which included computers. MI6 would provide him a computer network and secure lines in order to work on special projects for them.

Audrey loved the plan. It took elements of Jack's background, such as his estrangement from his wealthy family, and put it in a context that would be safe for him and valuable to MI6. She couldn't help but smile. She was sure the plan would work and Jack would finally be safe.

"Audrey," David continued. "MI6 wants to monitor the situation for several months before they would allow you to join Jack. If you and Jack decide that you want that, it can be arranged. Jim, you aren't going to like this part," he added.

"Why? What's the plan?" Heller asked.

"It isn't fully developed yet, but the basics are sketched out and once Jack is in place and everything is running smoothly, MI6 will re-evaluate. Audrey would need to schedule a business trip to England," David told Jim almost as if Audrey weren't in the room with them. "While she's there she'll rent a sports car and go out driving in the country. MI6 will stage an accident and take Audrey into protective custody. The press will be told that she was killed in the accident."

"No, David," Jim said as he got up and poured another scotch. He held up the bottle silently asking David if he wanted another drink but the former president shook his head. "I'm not having the world think that Audrey is dead. I'm willing to say that we had a falling out and that she moved overseas and I don't have contact with her, but I'm not willing to say that she's dead."

"There's no other way, Jim. Audrey's a public figure. As it is she's going to have to be careful to make sure that she isn't recognized, but if she changes her hair and keeps a low profile for a year or so, she'll be forgotten. If it looks like she's left the country to get away from you, every tabloid in the country will want that story. I'm sure that I don't have to remind you Jim that the press doesn't like you. You've been portrayed in the media as an overly aggressive Secretary of Defense. The press will turn you into the ogre father and do everything possible to get the story from Audrey. There will be no way to hide her. Reporters will be all over England looking for her. This would be the tabloid story of the year. If they think she's dead the story will drop. She and Jack can live safely in England."

"And you expect me to sit quietly through a funeral and burial? You expect me to go put flowers on an empty grave? I'm not putting an empty casket in the ground next to Audrey's mother, David. I refuse," Jim puffed angrily.

"MI6 suggested that it would be easier if you just scattered ashes in the English countryside near where the accident happened. Your press secretary can make the excuse that it was Audrey's favorite place in the world and she would have wanted it that way. Look, Jim, I'm not saying this is going to be easy. I'm just telling you what is necessary. It may all be a moot point if Jack refuses to take Audrey with him."

Jim nodded looking defeated as he swallowed a mouthful of scotch. He reached for the bottle to fill his glass again but stopped short as if realizing that all the scotch in the world wasn't going to improve this situation. He looked at Audrey. "How do you feel about this?"

"I'm not going to say that I love the idea of being dead, but if that's what it takes to spend the rest of my life with Jack, then that's okay," Audrey told him. "I love you, Dad, and I hate to see you hurt."

Jim reached for her hand and squeezed it. "Someday I hope you have children and understand how I feel right now. As a parent, all I ever wanted for my children was happiness. If I have to live through this so that you're happy, it's worth every bit of pain it might cause me."

With a plan now in place, Audrey could do nothing but sit back and wait for Chloe to call her. Nothing could have prepared her for the interminable waiting. She woke every morning hopeful that the day had come and went to bed every night disappointed that it had not. It was four months before Audrey picked up the phone on the private, secure line to her office and heard Chloe's voice on the other end.

"He called," Chloe said softly. It was seven o'clock in the evening Washington and Audrey was one of only a couple of people left in the office, but in LA, the work day was still in full swing and Chloe had to make sure the conversation wasn't over heard.

"I thought he'd never get in touch with you! Is he alright?"

"Yeah, he's fine. He's living northeast of LA off of route 58. The town is Mojave."

"Do you have an address?"

"Are you kidding?" Chloe asked incredulously. "He can't give me an address. I'm lucky he'll give me a town and a phone number. He's working on an oil rig there and he's using the name Frank Flynn."

"Thanks, Chloe. I'll take it from here," Audrey told her.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Audrey felt her anxiety rising as she guided her rental car along highway 58 toward Mojave. She had flown into LA the night before and spent the night. Now she was on her way to locate Jack.

The optimistic side of her thought that this should be a relatively easy task. Chloe had done some digging for her and was pretty sure that Jack was employed by one of two companies. Audrey's plan was simple. She would park her car in an inconspicuous place near the entrance of one of the companies early in the morning and watch the workers arrive for the start of the workday. If she didn't see Jack in the morning, she would go to the other company's entrance later in the day and monitor the workers leaving at the end of their shift. With any luck at all, she would see Jack either going to or coming home from work. If it didn't work, she wasn't entirely sure what she was going to do. She would probably stake out the entrances of the two possible employers for another day or two and after that she would have to start watching other sites.

Audrey found the first work site and was lucky enough to find an out of the way spot to park. It was a little farther away than she would have like to be, but she didn't have a lot of choice. There weren't many hiding places that gave her a good view of the entrance. She hadn't considered that the landscape surrounding the oil dig site would be so stark.

With the engine off and the windows cracked, Audrey sat back for what she knew might be a long and fruitless day. That was the pessimistic side of her talking. She sighed and pulled out a small pair of field glasses and watched as the workers began to arrive. Car after car pulled onto the small lot. Audrey had researched the process enough to know what to expect. All of the workers would show up, but not all of them would be needed for the day. Some would be turned away. New guys like Jack would be the first ones cut if they already met their quota for the day.

With field glasses trained on the parking lot, Audrey looked carefully at each man who parked his car or truck. She was fairly sure that none of them was Jack. In Chicago his hair had been long, but every man here had short hair so she suspected that he would have cut his to fit in. By 7:30 no more cars were coming in to the parking lot and several, presumably men not needed that day, had already left. Audrey tried not to be discouraged but couldn't help herself. It was pointless to move on to the other work site this early in the morning since there wouldn't be much activity in the parking lot before lunch time or even the end of the shift, so Audrey drove off in hopes of finding some way to waste the next few hours.

Those hours crawled by. Audrey wasn't interested in being seen, so she avoided the heart of the town and tried to stay on the periphery. She found a coffee shop where she picked up a cup of coffee and a pastry and nearby was a big playground with some benches off to the side. That seemed a reasonable place to spend some time, so she took the coffee and pastry and a book and sat on a bench in the sun.

By lunch time she was anxious to get moving again. It was time to check out the other work site. Parking was easier near the second site and Audrey was pleased with how well hidden she was while still being very near the parking lot entrance. A number of the men left for lunch, heading toward a sandwich shop that Audrey had passed on her way. A few men sat at picnic tables on the edge of the parking lot and ate lunches that they brought with them. She viewed them all carefully and again was disheartened to see that none of them was Jack.

She sat back, discouraged, but continued to watch the site. At the far end of the parking lot there was a small, corrugated metal building that likely housed the offices for the work site. She considered going to the office after lunch and asking if they had a worker named Frank Flynn, but she knew if Jack got wind that someone was looking for him that it would scare him off. She knew that was a bad idea. Jack was nearby if only she could be patient enough to wait for him.

As she was wondering how long she might have to keep up this surveillance, a man carrying a hard hat walked out of the office. Audrey didn't need to see his face. Even from this distance she knew that it was Jack. She could tell by the way he walked, his deliberate manner. It was the same way when she saw him in Chicago. She watched him go to a pickup truck in the parking lot and take out a lunch tote. With that he put down the tailgate of the truck and sat on it to eat his lunch.

Tears filled Audrey's eyes as she watched him. She wanted to run to him and pull him into her arms but knew that she couldn't. She would just have to wait. He would be leaving in a few hours and she could follow him home. Later, after dark, she would finally allow herself to meet him face to face. She prayed that he would agree to the government protection. If not, she knew that he would disappear again and no one, including Chloe, would ever hear from him.

Audrey maintained her post throughout the day and as the parking lot emptied at the end of the shift. She watched as the cars and trucks left in an orderly line kicking up dust from the dry, dirt lot. Jack's car was somewhere in the middle of the line; a fact that made Audrey curse aloud to herself. She wasn't experienced at following someone and now she was going to have to try and keep and eye on Jack while she was at the back of the line. She put the car in gear and took her place in the line unable to see Jack's car but hoping that if he made a turn that she would be able to see it and follow.

The two lane road wound toward the highway and then into town. As far as Audrey could tell, Jack was still somewhere in front of her. Little by little the cars peeled off at the various turns and Audrey caught sight of Jack. Now she would have to maintain her distance to prevent him from seeing her. She stayed several car lengths back and watched as he turned onto a side road. Audrey followed still maintaining her distance. About a mile down that road she watched as he indicated a turn and veered off into a short driveway. He pulled around to the rear of the house. Audrey took note of the location and house number and kept driving. A sweeping curve in the road allowed her to get a good view of the property.

The house was a modest one. It needed some repairs and Audrey could see that the fence around the property was falling down in the back. The structure was basic, cheap, square construction but had what Audrey assumed was an addition jutting awkwardly off the back. It could easily be a room that the owners rented out to oil riggers who were new to town. She smiled at the thought. If only Jack's landlord had any idea who was living in the spare room. She wondered if his polite manner and his educated way of speaking gave them any cause to suspect that he was not who he represented himself to be. They certainly would never guess that this was a man who had saved the life of the former president or that he had kept Los Angeles from being annihilated by a nuclear warhead on two separate occasions.

Another mile or so down the road, Audrey found a place to turn around. Then she headed back so that she could pass the property again and get the lay of the land. She needed to find a place to leave the car that night when she came back. She couldn't exactly pull it into the driveway. No, she needed some place to leave the car so that she could walk back to the house in the dark. She was hoping for a stand of trees but there was little vegetation. She finally settled on a two story building housing doctors' offices back on the main road. The walk was a good mile if not more, but it was the best she could do. No one would see a car parked in the rear of the building. She would leave it there after the offices closed and pick it up before they reopened. In the mean time, she was going to have to sit and wait.

It seemed to take forever, but by 8 o'clock the sun was finally setting. Audrey went back to the office building. The windows were all dark and no cars were left in the parking lot. Audrey killed the headlights and pulled her car behind the building. After locking the doors, she started on her way to the house where Jack was living. She was grateful that the back road was largely deserted since she was afraid that someone walking alone down that road after dark would look suspicious.

Audrey slowed her pace as she approached the house. She could now read the name stenciled on the mailbox: Huxley. There were lights on the front porch of the Huxley residence and she thought she saw Jack sitting on the steps next to a woman. She wondered what their relationship was and found herself more than a little jealous, an emotion that she tried hard to suppress while she figured out how she was going to approach the house with the two of them sitting outside.

A quick look around told Audrey that she could easily walk along the neighbor's property and climb over the broken fence in the back. The neighbor's house was dark and no cars were in sight so she felt safe walking along the fence which was out of Jack's line of sight. She crept stealthily along and finally reached the back of the Huxley property. This was it. Audrey took a deep breath and hoisted herself over the fence. The back yard was very dark with no lights and little moon to light the way. She stood stark still for a moment trying to get her bearings while her eyes adjusted to the darkness. After several seconds, she still couldn't see well but knew that it wasn't going to get any better so she took her first tentative steps toward the rear of the house where the addition was. The outline of the house loomed in front of her. Audrey focused on the back wall. There was a line of sad looking shrubs running the length of it. She would need a place to hide until Jack left the front porch and went into his room and these would have to do.

Audrey took another deep breath to steel herself to walk the final few yards to the house. Slowly she stepped forward wishing that she had considered the phase of the moon before she chose this date. A full moon would have lit the back yard nicely. At this point she was in the shadow of the house and it was even darker than it had been near the fence. Audrey took another step and as she did, she tripped a sensor for a motion detector light. The rear of the house was now blanketed in light.

Audrey gasped as she realized that her cover was blown and swung to find some shelter in the bushes by the house. In her haste, she failed to see two trash cans sitting on a concrete pad that extended from the house. The metal cans went crashing to the ground taking Audrey with them. She gathered her senses quickly, got up and ran the last few steps to the house and crouched behind the bushes. She knew that Jack and the woman on the front porch couldn't miss the noise and Jack would be back to investigate in a hot second. And he would probably be armed. Fear was strangling her as she heard Jack's voice coming from the other side of the wall.

"Don't make any sudden moves! Put your hands in the air where I can see them," he demanded.

Too afraid to look up, Audrey cowered against the house, head down but hands extended, shaking harder than she had ever shaken in her life. Jack dropped the baseball bat he was holding, apparently the only weapon he had at his disposal on such short notice. She felt his hands grab her collar and haul her up against the wall of the house. She finally found her voice. "Please, Jack," she whispered frantically in a quivering voice. "Don't hurt me, please!"

Jack stared in disbelief at Audrey. "What are you doing here?" he demanded in an angry whisper.

"I came here to help you," she whispered in return.

"Frank," a woman's voice came from around the corner. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, Diane. Everything's fine," Jack called back. "Stay here. Don't move!" he hissed to Audrey. He let go of her collar and pushed her down behind the bushes a little more forcefully than necessary. Then he turned and went back around the corner of the house. "Everything's fine." Audrey heard him say again. "It looks like the Morrison's dogs got into the trash again. They knocked over the cans."

"Not again! They need to fence their yard. Those dogs are a menace," the woman's voice replied. She had obviously bought Jack's story. "I'll get a broom and clean it up,"

"No, no, I'll take care of it," Jack offered. "It's my fault. I must not have put the lid on tightly when I brought that trash out after dinner. You go inside. It's getting late and you have to work tomorrow. I'll clean this up."

"Are you sure?"

"It's no problem, Diane. There wasn't that much in the cans. It'll just take a second."

"Okay, if you're sure. Thanks. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Good night," Jack returned politely.

Audrey could feel herself relax as she heard the front door close signaling that the woman had gone inside.

Jack returned to the rear of the house and held a finger up to his lips to indicate to Audrey that he wanted her to maintain her silence. He proceeded to pick up the couple of bags that fell largely intact from the trash cans. She watched as he righted the cans and secured their lids. With that he quickly surveyed the area and turned to Audrey. He unceremoniously grabbed her hand and tugged, again harder than necessary, to tell her to follow. Without much choice in the matter, Audrey stepped as quietly as possible from behind the bushes and followed.

Jack led them around the side of the house where he stopped to unlock a door. They stepped inside onto the dated linoleum floor.

"Stand still," Jack commanded in tone just above a whisper.

Still shaking, Audrey did as she was told. Jack went into the room, pulled the blinds down and turned on a light. He picked up a remote control and turned on a television, switching channels until he found a basketball game. He loved sports and Audrey suspected that to anyone listening, like a nosy landlady, it wouldn't be strange for him to be watching a basketball game, but at the same time, it would provide cover for their conversation.

Jack crossed back to Audrey. He was no longer whispering but kept his voice low. "Take off your shoes," he said looking down at the hard soled shoes that would make a noise on the flooring. Again Audrey did as she was told. She slipped off the shoes and set them next to the door. Jack then pulled her body close to his. "Walk with me," he told her. She understood what was happening. The way Jack positioned her they would only cast one shadow against the blind. Again, if they were being watched, it would appear that Jack was alone.

When they reached the sofa in front of the television, Jack put his hands on Audrey's shoulders. As he sat down he pushed Audrey down into a sitting position on the floor so that she remained invisible.

"Jack, this is crazy. No one knows that I'm here."

"And we're going to keep it that way," he retorted. "Now explain to me what the hell you're doing here."

"I came to offer you government protection."

"Audrey, our government isn't going to protect me. Charles Logan wants me dead."

"It's not our government. It's the British. MI6 is willing to provide you with a new identity and a job."

"MI6! Who else is involved in this, Audrey? How many people know that I'm alive?"

"I'm not stupid, Jack! I've kept it quiet. Besides Chloe, Tony and Michelle, only my father, David Palmer and Mike Novick, but based on the look on his face I'm pretty sure that Palmer knew before I told him."

"Does Kim know?"

"No, she still thinks you're dead and Palmer wants to keep it that way. I talked to him about letting Kim know about a relocation and protection plan and he was against it."

Jack nodded sadly. "He's right. It's better if she doesn't know."

"Did your father arrange the relocation?

"No, it was Palmer. He's still friends with the British Prime Minister and the head of MI6. He didn't give them your name. He just told them we had an undercover operative that needed to be protected. He gave them your qualifications and they agreed to help."

"Who knows that you're here?"

"Just my father. Chloe knew that I was coming to see you but she didn't know when. Tony and Michelle are completely out of the loop. They don't even know that I figured out that you're alive."

"How did you figure it out?"

"I was suspicious about some edits made to your autopsy. I was able to figure out that Chloe made the final edit. I didn't know what she was trying to cover up so I got someone to trail her electronically. When she made a reservation to fly to and from Chicago in one day, I decided to follow her."

"It was you on the motorcycle, wasn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Do you have any idea who was after me in the BMW?"

"None. Neither does Chloe. When I saw how you were living and that you were still in danger, I had to do something. So I talked to my father. He turned it over to David Palmer. He knew how close you were to Palmer and that he'd be willing to help."

"David Palmer saved my life. He warned me that Logan wanted me dead. I don't want him going further out on a limb and setting up protection for me. I can take care of myself."

"Oh, really? Jack I watched someone try and kill you in Chicago. You escaped that time. What's going to happen the next time? You might not be so lucky."

"I'm safer here than I was in Chicago. I traveled for a while before I settled here so I could make sure that no one was following me. I also didn't give Chloe a way to contact me. They found me in Chicago through Chloe. This time she can't lead them to me."

"Think about what you just said, Jack," Audrey said emphatically. "I found you through Chloe. If I got to her, they certainly can and who's to say what they might do to get the information out of her. You can't do this by yourself. I can help you. Let me help, Jack. I owe you that much."

"You don't owe me anything, Audrey," he said, his voice softening.

Audrey smiled slightly. "Yes, I do. I can't forgive myself for how I treated you that day at CTU. I wanted to blame someone for everything that happened and you were a convenient scapegoat. I had no right to lay all of that on you. I can't even tell you how sorry I am."

"You don't need to apologize, Audrey," he started.

Audrey interrupted, "Oh yes I do and I hope that someday you'll be able to forgive me. I told you that I loved you that day and I still love you now. I understand that you probably don't feel the same way any more, but I want you to know that you were the best thing that ever happened to me. Thinking that you were dead was the horrible. I didn't think it could get any worse than that. Then I realized that you were alive and how you were living and that turned out to be even worse. At least when I thought you were dead, I thought you were at peace. I can't stand to see you living this way," she swept her arm out to indicate the stark two room apartment in the back of a shabby house. "You have so much talent and you're wasting it working on an oil rig. I can make this end. You'll be safe and you'll be doing what you love. Let me help you, please," she implored him.

Jack leaned forward, elbows on knees and stared at Audrey for a second as if trying to gauge her sincerity. "Give me the details," he said softly.

Audrey outlined the plan. It was fairly simple, but Jack wanted all of the specifics. She was happy that she had anticipated most of his questions and had already gotten the answers from David Palmer.

"All that's left to arrange is a date, time and location to have you picked up. Once I get back to Washington, I'll talk to David and contact you." Audrey stopped talking and pulled a scramble phone from her bag. "Here. When I get the information, I'll call you with it."

Jack held the phone for a moment, staring at it, as if pondering his future.

"Are you in, Jack?" Audrey asked.

Jack sighed quietly and finally brought his eyes to rest on her. "Yes," he said so softly that it was almost inaudible. He set the phone on the nearby end table and then reached for Audrey's hands. "Thank you," he said bringing her hands to his lips and kissing them softly. "Thank you, Audrey."

Audrey swallowed hard to push back the tears that were threatening. She drew herself up on her knees and at the same time Jack leaned forward. Heads tilted slightly as their lips met. They shared several soft, tentative kisses before they both pulled away. Jack reached for the remote and turned off the television. He then reached to his left to turn off the lamp that provided the only light. Now shrouded in darkness Jack pulled Audrey up onto the sofa with him. Neither of them spoke. Their kisses became deep and intense. It was familiar territory and both fell easily back into a routine that had ended over a year earlier.

They kissed for a long time when Jack took Audrey's shoulders and eased her onto her back on the sofa. She groaned quietly.

"It says in my lease that I'm not allowed to have overnight guests. So we're going to have to be very quiet," he whispered, his face only inches from hers. Then nudging a silver earring out of the way and licking her earlobe, Jack spoke again. "Can you handle that?" he hissed seductively.

Audrey could manage nothing more coherent than, "Oh, Jack!"

"I'll take that as a 'yes'," he told her and proceeded to kiss her face and neck. Slowly he moved down her body opening the buttons on her blouse and kissing the newly exposed skin all the way down to the top of her jeans.

Audrey was in ecstasy. No man before Jack had ever made her feel this way. He knew exactly how to touch her and exactly how to tease her. He knew how to kiss her and what made her turn to putty in his hands. Before she knew it he had removed her blouse and bra and was hungrily, but tenderly, attacking her body. She bit her lip to avoid screaming. She watched Jack's face. He knew what he was doing to her and he loved it. He knew that she was on the verge of losing control and the look on his face told her that he had her right where he wanted her. He was making her crazy. She thrust her hips and pelvis up against him, silently begging him to continue. Jack obliged but on his own terms and in his own time frame. He lingered around the top of her jeans, finally opening them and running his tongue along the lace edge of her panties. She thought he would never take them off of her. Even when he did, he eased them down her legs kissing and caressing her all the way to her feet.

His self control was remarkable. Audrey knew that it was a quality that had served him well in field operations. He knew when to wait and when to act and nothing could spur him into action if the timing was wrong. He approached lovemaking the same way. Despite his own desire for satisfaction, he would never allow himself to climax until he had taken Audrey to the highest possible high.

Her jeans now on the floor, Audrey lay naked except for a tiny pair of panties. She watched as Jack slowly and painstakingly undressed for her, his body as supple and lithe as she had remembered it. His well muscled torso now even more rippled from the physical labor on the oil rig. As he lowered himself down onto her, Audrey reached down to take off her panties. Jack grabbed her hands and pinned them along her sides.

"Not yet, baby," he whispered. "Not yet. I'll take them off when it's time."

Audrey whimpered audibly. "Now, Jack, please," she begged.

He ignored her pleas and began kissing her playfully.

"Now, Jack," she commanded. "Take them off now or I'll scream. I swear, I'll scream and you'll have to explain to your landlady why you have a woman in your room."

Her forcefulness seemed to fuel his own excitement and without another second passing he stripped her of her panties. She immediately wrapped her legs around his back and stifled a groan of pleasure as he penetrated her.

What started on the sofa eventually moved to Jack's bed, where by the time they had finished, all of the bedclothes were scattered on the floor. Before the sun rose they found their way into the shower. They would simply have to make it through the day on adrenaline and caffeine, because no time was left for sleep. They had spent the entire night making love.

Once out of the shower and dressed, Jack stepped outside to make sure that no one was in sight. It was still dark enough to provide Audrey cover for the nearly mile walk back to her car. Jack wished he could drive her, but knew that the sound of his truck engine this early would arouse suspicion from his landlady. Instead, he walked part of the way back with her. They said little as they walked just reveling in the magic of the night.

"Audrey," Jack finally whispered. "I know I shouldn't ask this and I know that it is probably impossible to arrange, but is there any chance of you joining me in England?"

Audrey smiled. She wondered if he was going to ask. "If you want me there, that's where I want to be."

"I want you there. I told you at CTU that all I wanted was to spend my life with you and that hasn't changed, Audrey. I want us to spend our lives together if that's at all possible."

"I told David Palmer that my going with you was a possibility. He broached it with MI6. They said that it can be arranged but they want to have you in place first for a few months before I could join you. So we'll have to wait for a while, but yes, we can be together."

Jack stopped and pulled Audrey into his arms. "In the mean time, don't forget that I love you."

"I love you, too," she said enjoying the embrace and knowing that it was going to be the last one they shared for a long time. "I better go, Jack," she told him. "And you have to get back to the house before someone misses you."

"I know," he nodded giving her one last kiss. "Be careful. I'll be waiting for your call."

"It'll be a couple of weeks, but I'll be back to you as soon as I can," she promised.

Jack stood at the intersection of the main road and the side road where he lived. Audrey continued on by herself looking back occasionally to see if Jack was still watching. He was, of course. He watched until she was out of sight. By then the sun was peaking over the horizon and Audrey hurried back to her car.

She approached the car, glancing around to see if anyone was in the area. No one was. The parking lot was deserted. She dug through her bag, pulled out the keys and clicked open the door lock. With that she got in the car and drove off thinking only of the drive to LA, a hotel where she could sleep and a lifetime with Jack. Nothing stood in their way now except for maybe a few months' time until the relocation was complete.

Audrey drove down the road and headed through town to highway 58. She had just left the town and pulled onto a rural stretch of road not far from the oil field where Jack worked when she saw headlights coming up in the distance behind her. Her first thought was that it was a military vehicle and that it was driving a little fast for the conditions on the curvy road. As the distance between them closed, she realized that it was a civilian Hummer. The thought had no more than crossed her mind when the headlights went out and the massive automobile bumped her from the rear. Audrey accelerated to get away from him, but he hit her again. She picked up the pace again and swerved around a tight curve. He hit her a third time, harder this time, and Audrey felt the car swerve toward the shoulder. She held tight and maintained some control, although she over corrected and crossed the center line. As she did, she saw the Hummer come up along her passenger's side. He bumped her car from the side again forcing her onto the opposite shoulder. Barely maintain control at the high speed she was now driving, Audrey pressed forward hoping to get to a more populated area where her car and the Hummer would attract attention. The Hummer maintained its speed along side Audrey's car and again hit her passenger side. This time there was no way for her to maintain control. Her car was forced off the road and into the guardrail just feet off the road.

Audrey reached for the driver's side door to try and escape, but the door was pinned shut against the guardrail. She immediately tried to lower the window and crawl out, but before it was open, the passenger side door was opened and a large man reached in to pull her out.

Audrey fought hard and screamed for help, but in the end she was no match for the man. He dragged her, kicking and flailing, out of the car and threw her into the back of the Hummer. He climbed in and sat on top of her effectively pinning her down. He pulled the rear hatch down behind him. "Move!" he roared to the driver. At the same time as the vehicle started moving, the man bound Audrey's hands and ankles and covered her mouth with duct tape. "Jesus Christ! Can this broad fight!" he told the driver. I know Graem told us not to hurt her but if that bitch kicked me one more time I was going to flatten her. This ain't worth what that rich son of a bitch is paying us."

_**Author's note: A sorta, kinda spoiler alert:** In Season 6, some of Jack's family is introduced for the first time. I have chosen to include those family members in this story. I'm not sure whether or not to call this a spoiler. None of their actions in this story will reveal what happens in season 6, but it will suggest it. I will carry the personalities and relationships that are part of season 6 into the story. **So the bottom line is**, if you are strictly avoiding season 6 spoilers, you probably should stop reading the story at this point. I don't want to be blamed for spoiling anyone's season 6. Let me take this opportunity to apologize to anyone who has read up until this point and now feels they have to quit. I hope you will come back at some point and finish. I didn't make the decision to write in characters from season 6 until a few days before I posted this or I would have posted season 6 spoiler alerts from the start. _


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Audrey lay in the back of the Hummer trying to get her breath. She was bruised and exhausted from fighting and she couldn't make herself stop shaking. The driver had stopped for a moment to allow her attacker to get out of the rear of the vehicle and climb into the passenger seat. She listened to their conversation hoping to figure out if this was some kind of random attack or if she had been followed and set up. If that was the case, then Jack was in danger.

"I want combat paying for bringing down that bitch and not even gettin' a piece a her ass! Graem didn't say she would be a fighter. Hey Frank, how's about we find a private little place off the road and get us each a piece a her. I bet she's a sweet one, nice and tight. Skin's real soft. I could feel it when I was tyin' her up. I'm gettin' a hard on just thinkin' 'bout her."

Audrey felt tears begin to flow down her face. Now on top of everything else she was overwhelmed by the fear of being raped. She cringed at the thought and curled into a ball on the floor of the car as if that was going to help her.

"Well, splash some water on your face and get a hold of yourself," the driver admonished him. "We're being paid to bring her in unharmed. If she got a little bruised in the struggle, I can't help that, but raping her is a different issue."

"Why? You afraid of Graem? Maybe he just wants to save her for hisself."

"Shut up, you ass! You talk too much. Stop using names. I don't want to hear another word out of you."

The conversation in the front seat ended and Audrey was fairly sure the driver would not let anything happen to her. It gave her time to start thinking about what she had heard. She obviously had been targeted. This was no random kidnapping. And someone named Graem hired these men to abduct her. The name Graem stuck in her head. It could be either a first name or a last name but off the top of her head, she couldn't think of anyone she was acquainted with who had the name. Then why did it seem so familiar? It took several minutes but she finally remembered. Only what she remembered couldn't be right. The only Graem that she knew was Jack's brother, Graem Bauer.

Audrey had only met Graem once and that was at Jack's funeral. Jack was largely estranged from his family, but his father, brother and sister-in-law all came to his funeral. Jack's father, Phillip, seemed nice enough. He wasn't particularly warm, but he seemed sincere when he stood next to Kim at the gravesite. Graem, on the other hand, looked at his watch several times as if he had more important places to be than at his brother's funeral. Audrey had taken an instant dislike for him. She also remembered that Graem's wife, Marilyn, had sobbed almost uncontrollably at times through the entire service. It was a strange scene and Audrey had done her best to stay on the periphery of it. She stood with her father and the CTU staff members who were in attendance.

Now none of it made any sense and Audrey was too tired from a sleepless night and fighting off an attacker to think. Despite her desire to remain vigilant and look for any opportunity to escape, she couldn't help drifting off to sleep.

Jack was driving to work in a blissful afterglow when he saw the battered, abandoned car off to the side of the road. He hardly noticed it at first. His thoughts were with Audrey. He couldn't believe that she was back in his life, that they finally had the chance to be together. Jack wasn't even sure what it was about the car that attracted his attention. Obviously there had been an accident but there were no emergency vehicles around. Apparently the occupants had walked away and probably planned to have the car towed away later that morning. _Teenagers_, he thought. _Joy riding, maybe drinking. They got out and walked away and would deal with their parents and the aftermath in the morning. _But still that didn't seem right. Jack decided to investigate.

He pulled his truck off to the side of the road and got out. He circled the car once in order to get a sense of what happened. It didn't take a particularly skilled investigator to figure it out. The car had been hit from behind more than once by a much larger vehicle. At some point the larger vehicle hit the car from the side. It wasn't a simple sideswipe; there was a direct point of impact, as if the driver of the larger vehicle had turned into the small, white car. It looked to Jack like the white car had been forced off the road. That made this a crime scene.

Jack took a handkerchief out of his pocket and covered his hand with it. This car was going to be processed for prints and he didn't want his to be found on it. He opened the car door and looked in. The car was clean; nothing was out of place. There wasn't any blood that he could see. As he turned to get back out, something on the floor caught his eye. Jack looked again and saw that the sun was reflecting off a small, silver, hoop earring. He recognized it immediately. The earring had been in Audrey's ear when he was kissing her earlobe. Fear overwhelmed him. Someone had followed Audrey and now they had her. This wasn't random. Whoever tried to run him down in Chicago had grabbed Audrey to draw him out into the open. And it was going to work. As he had done several years earlier for Teri and Kim, he would do anything to protect Audrey even if it meant that he had to come out of hiding and admit that he had escaped, even if that meant that he had to turn himself over to the government and ultimately, be given over to the Chinese. Jack got back into his car still holding Audrey's earring, took out his phone and called Chloe.

"CTU, O'Brian."

"Chloe, it's me," he said.

"What are you doing calling me here?" she whispered frantically into the phone.

"Something's wrong. Audrey's missing. She was here yesterday and this morning I found a car, that I'm pretty sure was her rental, forced off the side of the road. I need CTU to get involved. I need a crime scene team here to process this car. We have to find her Chloe."

"Are you sure about this? How do you know it was her car?" 

"I found her earring in it. If you run the plates, I bet you find that it's a rental car and that the last person to rent it was Audrey. I'm serious, Chloe. Get Buchanan involved. Audrey's in danger."

"Okay, I'll get Buchanan involved, but you need to get out of town right now. You're cover's been blown. You're not safe there any more."

"Yeah, tell me about it," he said sarcastically. "I'm not going anywhere until you talk to Buchanan. I don't care about my cover. I want Audrey rescued. I don't think they'll hurt her for a while. I think they want to get to me."

"Alright then, don't do anything until I talk to Buchanan. Go to work or do whatever you would normally do this morning. We don't want you calling any attention to yourself. Act like nothing is wrong and I'll get back to you as soon as I talk to Buchanan."

"Okay. I'll go to work, but call me as soon as you have anything."

Chloe hung up the phone and ran up the steps to Bill's office. She knocked but didn't wait for a response. "Mr. Buchanan, I need to talk to you."

The look on Bill's face was clearly one of irritation. "I'm busy, Chloe."

"This is important."

He squinted at her. There were no active protocols in place, no interagency memos. Nothing urgent was going on anywhere in the country this morning. "I have a budget meeting at Division this morning and if you want a raise next year, you'll leave me alone. We can talk when I get back."

"No, with all due respect sir, we need to talk now."

"One minute, Chloe! You have one minute to tell me what is so important," Bill said in an exasperated tone.

"Jack Bauer is alive and we think that Audrey Raines has been kidnapped in order to force Jack out into the open," Audrey said in her usual hurried voice.

"What?" Bill roared as he stood up and threw his Mont Blanc pen onto the pile of papers on his desk. "What do you mean 'Jack Bauer is alive'? I saw Jack on the floor in the transformer room very, very dead."

"Actually, he was dead when you saw him. He took a drug that stopped his heart but it got reversed."

"'It got reversed,'" Bill repeated. "Are you saying that it somehow reversed itself or that someone gave Jack something to reverse it?"

"The second choice, sir."

"Who did that, Chloe?"

"I'd rather not say, sir."

"Chloe," Bill said coming around the desk and positioning his body close to hers. He was much taller than she and his presence was intimidating. "I can fire you Chloe. I can fire you as sure as you're standing here. You need to tell me who else is involved in this sophomoric prank."

Chloe took a breath and steeled herself. "We can talk about all of that later, sir. Right now, Jack needs our help and so does Audrey. And seeing as Audrey Raines is the daughter of the Secretary of Defense, maybe we better get right on that. Sir," she added for good measure. Bill's body language told Chloe that he knew that she was right, but she also knew that he would have the final word in all of this.

"Alright," he sighed. "Tell me what's going on."

Chloe detailed the previous 14 months in just a few sentences. "So that's it, Audrey showed up yesterday in Mojave to offer Jack protection by the British government. This morning her car was run off the road and she's missing."

"Okay," Bill said. "Get a crime scene team out there to process the car for evidence. Tell all local agencies to back off. Let them know that we have reason to believe that the Secretary of Defense's daughter was in the car. Most local jurisdictions are going to be happy to keep out of a high profile case like that. These kinds of cases have a way of blowing up in their faces. Don't tell the team where the tip came from. Right now I'd like to have as few people as possible know that Jack is alive."

"What about Jack? He needs protection."

"I know that."

"Where is Jack now?"

"We decided that it was best if he tried to look like nothing unusual had happened. He went to work."

"Okay, fine. How do I get in touch with him?" Chloe gave Bill the number. "Dispatch the crime scene team now and tell Curtis that I need to see him. We'll work something out and then call Jack."

"And somebody needs to talk to Secretary Heller. He doesn't know that Audrey's missing," Chloe reminded Bill.

"I guess that's my job. I'll call Heller. Just dispatch the team and send Curtis in." Bill reached for his phone. "Tish," he said to his secretary. "Call Hammond at Division and tell him that I can't make our meeting. I have an emergency. We have reason to believe that Audrey Raines from DoD has been kidnapped outside of Bakersfield. The details are sketchy and I'll get back to him as soon as we have more information."

Chloe took off out of Bill's office at a trot. She ran into Curtis at the bottom of the stairs. "Buchanan needs to see you now," she said.

"What's going on?" he asked in his always steady voice.

"Ask him! I don't have time for this now!" Chloe huffed as she brushed past him on her way to the nearest phone.

Ten minutes later, Secretary Heller had been informed of his daughter's probable kidnapping, a crime scene team was in the air, on its way to Mojave and Bill was on the phone with Jack. He and Curtis had hashed out a workable plan. They both felt that the easiest way to get Jack out of Mojave and into their protection was to go to his work site and stage an arrest. They could produce a fake arrest warrant, handcuff him and take him away. Although it would result in some local talk for a few days, the talk would die down quickly. The oil fields in Mojave brought in a lot of transient workers, some of whom brought a background of scrapes with the law. Frank Flynn would quickly be forgotten as one of those troublemakers that the companies tried to avoid hiring. Once they had Jack in their custody, they would hole him up in a CTU safe house outside of LA. Jack agreed to the plan. He would simply continue working as if nothing was wrong and would go without a fight when Bill and Curtis arrived. Bill explained that several details still needed to be ironed out and it would be a few hours before he and Curtis would get to Mojave.

The hardest part of this whole operation was going to be deciding which agents he could use that could be trusted to remain secret about Jack being alive. Curtis was now in on it and could certainly be trusted. Two other names immediately came to mind: Tony Almeida and Michelle Dessler. He knew when Chloe refused to give up her co-conspirators that the two of them were involved. They were no longer active, but he could easily persuade them to become active. In fact, he would tell them that they would agree to reactivate or go to prison for conspiracy and cover up. Another possibility was Chase Edmunds. Chase had been Jack's partner for over a year and the two had a better than average working relationship. Jack even supported Chase's relationship with Kim, something that almost no one ever thought he would do. Bill had heard through Chloe that Kim and Chase were no longer together, but he was sure that Edmunds would still agree to help out his one-time partner. He was also sure that Chase had enough respect for Jack to keep his secret.

Secure line phone calls starting with Chase provided the desired results. Chase didn't have to think twice. He told Bill to give him a time and a place to show up and he would do it. Jack had put his life on the line for Chase and Chase was willing to do almost anything to repay that. Tony, as Bill had suspected was a tougher sell, forcing Bill to play hardball with the former CTU director.

"Tony," Bill said matter of factly. "This is Bill Buchanan."

"Bill, this is a surprise," Tony replied. His tone gave away nothing.

"I'm sure it is. I have a favor to ask you and Michelle."

"What is it?" 

"I need to reactive you."

"Bill, that isn't possible. First of all, we're 3000 miles away from you. Secondly, Michelle is pregnant. I don't want her doing that kind of work."

"Is Michelle due soon?"

"Not for another six weeks, but that's beside the point."

"I understand, Tony, but I'll provide the transportation and I'll make sure that Michelle isn't put in any dangerous positions. We'll need her for IT support."

"We run a business, Bill. We can't just walk away and do your bidding."

"Maybe I made this sound like a request, Tony. It's really not a request; it's an order."

"You have no right to order me to do anything, Bill. Michelle and I don't work for you," Tony said his anger evident in his voice.

"In that case, I'll put out a warrant for your arrest and send federal marshals to your home."

"On what grounds?"

"Conspiracy and cover up in the death of Jack Bauer. I just got off the phone with Jack and he's very much alive. You and Michelle and Chloe are neck deep in this, Tony, and right now I have the Secretary of Defense breathing down my neck because his daughter has been kidnapped in what looks like an attempt to draw Jack out in the open. You three have a lot to answer for and either you help me get Audrey Raines back into the loving arms of her father and protect Jack Bauer or you are going to jail with your wife. I really don't care if she's pregnant or not," Bill snarled angrily. He hated to pull that trump card, especially since he was still more than a little fond of Michelle, but right now it was necessary.

"Alright," Tony said, his tone no longer defiant but defeated. "What do we do?"

"Sit tight for the moment. I'll arrange military transport for the two of you out to LA. I'll get back to you as soon as I have the details." His tone then softened a bit. "If you'd like, bring a copy of Michelle's medical records and I can make sure that the doctors in our clinic are available to her if she has any concerns."

Tony grunted begrudging thanks before hanging up.

With the help of Secretary Heller, it didn't take long for Bill to arrange the military transport for Tony and Michelle from a Marine base in North Carolina. He called Tony to tell him that the flight was leaving in less than an hour. With that finished he called Chloe to find out if there were any developments from the crime scene team. She could only tell him that she had confirmed that the car had been rented by Audrey Raines in LA less than 48 hours earlier and was due to be returned later that day. Audrey had tickets for a return flight to DC that evening. She also said that the team had reported that Audrey's fingerprints were found in the interior of the car, but so were dozens of other unidentified prints. Rental cars went from person to person with all of them leaving fingerprints. If could take days to sort those out in hopes of getting a print or a good partial on one of the suspected kidnappers.

"Keep working on it. I also need you to get a safe house ready. When you get a location, call Chase and tell him where it is. He'll man the safe house for the time being."

"He's going to man a safe house alone?" Chloe asked. Procedure called for at least three agents to man a safe house.

"Just temporarily. I'm not sure who else I can trust. I have Tony and Michelle coming in on a military flight. Once they get here, they'll help. In the mean time, you and Curtis and I will take turns helping. I've got to go. Curtis has a chopper waiting. He and I are going to fly up to Mojave," he told her. Without elaborating, Chloe knew what he meant. He and Curtis were going to get Jack. "You're the ranking agent while he and I are gone, so I'm leaving you in charge. Call me if anything comes up."

With that, Bill drew the blinds in his office and changed from his business suit into black fatigues and a CTU windbreaker. He needed to look the part of an arresting officer when he arrived in Mojave. Curtis would be dressed almost identically. If he went in wearing a suit, it might look suspicious. In minutes he was leaving his office and heading for the roof top helipad.

Audrey awoke as the Hummer pulled to a stop. She was sleepy and disoriented and it took her several seconds to get her bearings. Tears filled her eyes again as she wondered if Jack was safe and if anyone even knew that she was missing. She couldn't imagine how they would know. No one except her father knew that she was in California and he wasn't expecting to hear from her until much later in the day. It seemed likely that her disappearance had gone unnoticed.

The electric window on the driver's side opened and someone from outside of the car was speaking to the driver. "What the hell did you do to this car? The whole driver's side is dented, headlights are broken, the front bumper's a mess! What the hell did you do?"

"We had to force her car off the road," the driver answered defensively.

"It took this much effort to force her off the road? Don't you think that's overkill? All you had to do was come up along side her and crowd her!" the exasperated voice shouted. "I didn't think you could possibly be as stupid as you look, but obviously I was wrong. Never mind. I'll open the bay doors. Take the car into the warehouse we need to get it out of sight."

Audrey felt the car begin to move again. In less than a minute the car was inside a dark building. The driver set the brake and turned off the ignition. Both front doors opened and as soon as they did, Audrey heard the first shot. If she hadn't been gagged she would have screamed in shock. She trembled from head to toe.

"What'd you do that for?" Audrey recognized the voice of the man who had tied her up, the one who wanted to rape her.

"Because he was stupid, that's why. So don't do anything stupid unless you want to end up like your friend. Now get her out of the car."

The rear of the car opened and the man who put Audrey into the back of the Hummer unceremoniously grabbed her and pulled her out. He slung her over his shoulder and carried her around the car. Audrey saw the body of the driver lying half in the vehicle and half outside of it.

"Where do you want her?"

"There's a chair over there. Sit her there and tie her up. Make sure she's secure. I don't want her going anywhere."

Audrey finally got her first look at the man. She was right. He was Graem Bauer, Jack's brother. Had she not met him before, she never would have guessed that the two were related. They looked nothing alike. Graem was soft and balding, his face round. It was in such contrast to Jack's long, thin face, full head of hair and solid body. Graem reminded her of the kid at school who everyone picked on. She wondered if that were true and she wondered if Jack had come to his rescue.

"Audrey Raines," Graem said approaching her. He smiled a forced smile. "So nice to see you again. I think the last time we were together was for my brother's funeral. But it seems that was a little premature, wasn't it. Jack seems to be very much alive. That's a problem. He's not supposed to be alive. Charles Logan was supposed to have one of his agents take care of that for me. But, like everything else Charles does, he screwed that up, too. So we were all forced to stand at the cemetery and pretend that we were grieving for someone who wasn't really dead. Well, I for one, have had enough of Jack. That self-righteous son of a bitch isn't going to get the chance to make any more trouble for me. He thinks I'm stupid, but he's wrong. I know him and I know his weak spots, his Achilles' heel, so to speak. It's you. You're it, Audrey. You are Jack's Achilles' heel. You and Kim, of course, but Dad would never forgive me if I hurt Kim. His only granddaughter, you know. He's never cared that I produced a son, a real heir. He's only ever really cared about Kim." Graem paused for a second. "I'm sure you don't really care to hear about our dysfunctional family. You just want to know why you're here. Let me explain. You are going to get Jack to come and rescue you. Only when he does that, he's going to die. So you just sit there and make yourself comfortable. You'll have a front row seat so you can watch this little family drama play out."

Graem stalked away and Audrey watched him go. He was crazy! She hadn't liked him when she first met him, but she had no idea that he was paranoid and homicidal. She had to find a way to keep Jack from coming to get her. Graem hadn't mentioned killing her, but she knew that was the only possibility. She knew too much. He had to kill her once Jack was dead. Their survival depended on her and she was determined not to let Jack down.

Curtis landed the CTU chopped not far from the oil field where Jack was working. Jack heard the familiar sound before he actually saw it. He watched, trying not to show any more than a passing interest, as the black speck on the horizon grew larger and larger. The big bird set down in a slight depression that was out of Jack's line of sight. He knew what would happen next. Bill and Curtis would walk the quarter mile to the oil field office and talk to the foreman. They would show him a fake arrest warrant and ask him to get Frank Flynn. He would radio out to the team on the rig to send Frank to the office. From there they would play out an arrest scene, cuff him and leave. The scene played out just as Jack expected and within an hour, he was in the chopper and on his way back to LA. Headphones on, Jack could hear the conversation between Bill and Chloe.

"Chloe, which safe house are we using?"

Chloe gave Bill an address that Jack recognized. It was a safe house north of LA that they had used in a number of operations in the past.

"Curtis," Chloe continued. "You can land the chopper in a vacant lot about two miles west of that location. I'll have a car dropped off for you there."

"Thanks, Chloe," Bill said. "Any word on Audrey yet?"

"No, sir, nothing specific. We're checking out a report to the state police of a black Hummer driving aggressively near the ramp to route 58 outside of Mojave. The caller complained that the Hummer was traveling at a high rate of speed and cut him off. They also noted a lot of damage to the driver's side of the vehicle. By the time the police got there, the Hummer was long gone. I was about to run the plates and get the owner's name, but the car is probably stolen. I also told the crime scene team to sample the paint left on Audrey's car to see if it might have come from a Hummer."

"Good work," Bill complimented her. "Let me know if you get anything else."

Curtis had landed the chopper and the three were on their way to the safe house before they heard from Chloe again.

"Mr. Buchanan, I've got something that I thought you better know about. I ran the plates on that Hummer and the car is registered to BXJ Technology."

"Are you sure about that, Chloe?"

"Yes, sir. It's a black Hummer registered to BXJ. There's no report that the car's been stolen."

"Alright, Chloe, Curtis and I will follow up on that."

"What was that, Bill? Does Chloe have a lead?" Jack asked anxiously.

Bill sighed. He had to tell Jack. "It looks like the car that ran Audrey off the road is registered to BXJ Technology."

"My father's company?"

"Yes," Bill said succinctly.

"There must be a mistake. The car was probably stolen."

"That's a possibility, but there's been no report of a stolen car by BXJ."

"Cars are signed out to employees all the time. Someone must have signed for the car and never brought it back. Or, it could have been stolen from that employee and he's too afraid to report it to the police. There are a lot of possibilities, Bill."

"I understand that, Jack. Curtis and I will check it out once you're at the safe house."

Jack, Curtis and Bill were met at the safe house by Chase, who was thrilled to see Jack. The four briefly discussed security and having completed that, Curtis and Bill left to talk to officials at BXJ. Jack and Chase sat back for a long, anxious day of surveillance. They had done this far too many times in the past and knew the drill. They sat in silence for a few minutes and then began to reconnect.

"How's Kim?" Jack asked.

"The last I saw her she was doing better," Chase answered.

"The last you saw her? What does that mean?"

"We're not together any more."

"Why not?"

Chase shrugged. "It just didn't work, Jack. Things were already rocky at the point that we thought you were killed, but we were working on it. After that, Kim didn't want to try any more. It became too much effort to stay together. I'm sorry, Jack. I've always felt like I let you down. I always wanted it to work."

Jack nodded. "When did you break up?"

"About three months after you escaped. For a while I took Angela to see her every week or so. They were close and I wanted it to stay that way. Kim was the only mother Angela's ever known. After a few months Kim started seeing someone else and she decided that we should make a clean break. She thought it would get too confusing for Angela. So I haven't seen her in about six months."

"Do you think it would be better if she knew that I was alive?" Jack asked.

"I don't know," Chase answered shaking his head. "If you can be part of her life, then I would say yes. If you're just going to have to disappear again, then I think that it's better that she doesn't know. She's through the worst part of the grieving process. If you come back into her life and leave it again, you're forcing her to grieve all over again."

Jack nodded again. "It sounds like you still care for her."

"I do. I suspect that I always will, but that's not what she wants so I better just get over it."

Neither said anything more and Chase and Jack fell back into a comfortable silence.

Curtis and Bill arrived at BXJ and immediately sought out the head of security. The situation was explained. In brief, a BMX Corporation car was thought to be at the scene of the kidnapping of a government official. It was that simple. Records for the use of that car would need to be examined. If BXJ didn't cooperate, Bill would get a warrant and force their cooperation.

The head of security, Hugh Scholtz, was a retired LAPD officer. Scholtz was quick to cooperate. "I've got the records for all of our cars right here," he said leading Bill and Curtis to his desk and sitting down at his computer. "What was the license number?"

Bill handed him a piece of paper with the license number on it and Scholtz two-finger typed it into the computer.

"According to the computer log, that car is sitting right in space number 7," Scholtz said looking up at Bill and Curtis. "Would you like to take a look at it?"

Bill indicated that they would and the three of them headed out to the garage. On the way, Scholtz stopped at the security desk and picked up the keys from the guard on duty.

"Space 7, sir," the young security guard said as he handed the keys from a set of pegs on the wall.

Hugh Scholtz opened the door leading out to the garage and turned left. "Space 7 is right down here," he said as they walked.

It took only seconds to reach the designated space and find it empty. "Well, that's strange," Scholtz said. "I'm holding the keys, so the car has to be here somewhere."

"Do you have more black Hummers?" Curtis asked.

"Just the one in space 8," Scholtz said indicating the car parked next to the empty space. "All of our other cars are smaller. We really didn't need those two Hummers but Mr. Bauer wanted them and he authorized them, so we bought them."

"Mr. Bauer? Would that be the company president, Phillip Bauer?" Bill asked.

"No, it was his son, Graem."

"Wouldn't Phillip have to sign off on them as the company president?"

"No, Graem is the chief financial officer. His signature is all we need on purchases under a million dollars. The board of directors requires that the chairman of the board signs all purchases over a million."

"A million dollars?" Bill said unable to mask the surprise in his voice. "Isn't that a little high? I would think that a company the size of BXJ would require a board signature on purchases over about $250,000."

"It used to be $250,000 but it was changed about a year ago," Hugh explained.

"Why the change?" Bill asked. He knew that the question didn't seem relevant, but the practice struck him as unusual.

"For years, the Bauer family representative on the Board of Directors was Jack Bauer. The Board liked that Jack didn't work in the family business and felt that he had less of an ax to grind. When he was killed, Graem took his place. He lobbied to have the higher dollar amount added to the sign off clause. My understanding is that he had tried to lobby the Board while Jack was alive but Jack blocked all of his attempts. It's an eight member board, but the family representative has two votes, so he can break a tie. Graem could get four Board members to go along with his plan, but while Jack was alive, his two votes would break the four-four tie and prevent Graem's motion from passing. Once Jack was gone, Graem was able to railroad his motion through."

"Why was Graem so desperate to increase the single signature expenditure requirement to a million dollars?" Curtis asked.

Scholtz shrugged. "I don't know, because the Board never denied any of his requests when they had to sign off on a large expenditure. I guess he just didn't want to bother having to go through the Board every time he wanted to spend money. Does this have anything to do with the missing Hummer?"

"Probably not," Bill said. "It just struck me as odd. I'm sorry we got off track. Do you have any theories on where the Hummer is?"

"None. I'm at a loss. I've got the keys in my hand so the Hummer should be sitting right here."

"There must be a second set of keys for the car. Where are they kept?" Curtis asked.

"Those are in the executive suite. Mr. Bauer, that's Mr. Phillilp Bauer, has a safe in his office. All of the extra keys for our fleet of cars are kept in his office."

"Who would have access to those keys other than Phillip Bauer?" Curtis aksed.

"Anyone who he authorizes to have access to his office and his safe."

"Does his son have access?"

"I don't know that. Only Mr. Bauer could tell you who he's given access to."

Bill spoke. "We need to talk to Mr. Bauer. Is he in?"

Phillip Bauer was in his office and less than thrilled to see two CTU agents at his door.

"Agent Buchanan," he said without bothering to shake Bill's hand. "The last time I saw anyone from CTU was at my son's funeral. If it weren't for CTU, he'd still be alive. Don't think that I've forgotten that."

"We're sorry to bother you, Mr. Bauer," Bill said trying hard to stay calm. He was convinced that BXJ was somehow involved in Audrey's disappearance and he didn't feel like dealing with the likes of Phillip Bauer, a man who believed that his position should buy him power and respect from everyone. "We're investigating the disappearance of a government official and we have reason to believe that a car owned by BXJ was involved. That car is missing from your lot. One set of keys is accounted for, we need to see the other set. I understand that you keep those in a safe in your office."

Phillip Bauer looked genuinely confused. "All of the spare keys are right here," he agreed leading them to a rather old fashioned safe with a combination, rather than a digital, lock. Phillip deftly spun the knob and opened the safe, pulling from it a wooden box. He relocked the safe and set the box on a table. Opening the box, he said, "Here, I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for."

Bill let Hugh sort through the sets of keys, each set labeled with the license plate number from the car. "They're not here, Mr. Bauer."

"They have to be there," Phillip said now sorting through the keys himself but unable to find them.

"Who else has access to this safe?" Bill asked.

"Just me and my son, Graem."

"We'll need to speak with your son, Mr. Bauer," Bill said. "Is he in his office?"

"No, he didn't come in to work this morning. I haven't talked to him today," Phillip told Bill.

"Then we'll need to call him. Can you give me a phone number?"

"I'll call him," Phillip offered. "He'll answer his cell."

Phillip pushed speed dial number 1 on his office phone. He set the phone on speaker and they all listened while the phone rang. After several rings a woman's voice answered.

"Marilyn?" Phillip said as Graem's wife answered the phone.

"Yes, Phillip. What can I do for you?"

"I need to talk to Graem. Is he there?"

"No, of course not. Did you forget?" 

"Forget what?"

"Graem is in eastern Europe on company business. He left early this morning. He never takes his cell phone with him to eastern Europe because the reception is so poor," Marilyn explained.

"That's right. I did forget about that," Phillip replied. "Forgot all about that. Sorry to bother you, Marilyn." Phillip hung up the phone. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, I completely forgot that Graem was going away on business. I bet he took that car to the airport. He probably didn't want to leave his Mercedes in long term parking so he took a company car. He does that pretty regularly."

"Without telling you or signing the car out?"

"He worked late last night. He probably took the car after everyone was gone and didn't think to tell anyone."

"That doesn't explain how the car ended up being seen outside of Bakersfield early this morning," Bill noted.

"That must have been a mistake. The person took down the wrong license plate," Phillip said confidently. "Now if you don't have any other questions, gentlemen, I need to get back to work," Phillip said and sat down behind his desk and, without another word, went back to work.

Curtis opened his mouth to speak, but Bill cut him off. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Bauer. We'll consider the matter closed for the time being, but we'll need to do some further investigation. I hope we'll find you and your staff willing to work with us later if the need arises."

Phillip Bauer didn't bother to answer but continued to read the contract in front of him. And with that, Bill and Curtis left his office followed by the head of security. Bill and Curtis followed Hugh Scholtz to the main entrance of the building, thanked him for his time and suggested that they would be back in touch. Bill could tell from the look in Scholtz's eyes that the former cop wasn't satisfied with his employer's response to their questions, but he knew enough not to question his boss or to give any additional information to the federal agents.

Once in the car, Bill pulled out his phone to call Chloe. "Chloe, I need you to review the passenger manifests on all flights leaving LAX and the surrounding airports to see if Graem Bauer was on any of them. I also want you to put out an APB on the Hummer that was seen near Bakersfield. BXJ can't account for the car and Phillip Bauer is stonewalling."

While Bill was calling CTU, Phillip Bauer was making a phone call of his own. After Bill, Curtis and his head of security left his office, Phillip turned to his computer. He tapped on the keyboard and pulled up the images from the security cameras around the building. He watched the front door camera knowing that Buchanan and Manning would be escorted out through that exit. Seconds later he saw the men shaking hands with Hugh and leaving. Once they were gone, Phillip stood and took out his wallet. He fished through it for a moment until he found an old business card for a cleaning service that BXJ hadn't dealt with in years. On the card was a hand written phone number. Phillip rarely used the number so he had never committed it to memory. Instead he kept it on what looked, to anyone rifling his wallet, to be a useless old business card. He took out his phone and dialed the number. It was answered on the second ring.

"Yes," Graem said as he picked up the phone.

"Where the hell are you?" Phillip asked.

"At an alternate site," Graem said cryptically. Phillip knew immediately where he was. "Alternate site" was their code term for an old warehouse that BXJ had rented for many years. They had abandoned it about 18 months earlier when they built a new warehouse closer to their headquarters. The owner of the warehouse hadn't been successful in renting it so it sat unused. Graem still had a set of keys and had used the site more than once for, what he would have called, business dealings.

"And what are you doing there?"

"Taking care of some business."

"Does that 'business' involve an upper level DoD employee?"

"It may," Graem said beginning to sound nervous. "How do you know that?"

"Two of Jack's friends from CTU just showed up at my office. One of our Hummers was seen near the site of the abduction. CTU is looking for it and I can't account for it."

"What did you tell them?"

"That you took the car when you went to the airport for a business trip."

"Did they buy it?"

"I doubt it. They aren't stupid! I'm sure they're going to check every outgoing flight to see if you are on one. Jesus Christ! What were you thinking?" Phillip asked incredulously.

"This is the only way. He was getting way to close to figuring out what we're doing. He's going to spill the beans on us and we'll both end up in prison."

"You seem to forget that the entire world thinks that Jack Bauer is dead. He can't hurt us any more. I don't care what information he's got on the company's finances. He can't turn it over to the authorities without surfacing. If our government finds out that he's alive, they'll be obliged to turn him over to the Chinese. On top of that, they'll have to prosecute the people who helped him escape. You know full well how self righteous he is. He might be willing to turn himself over to the Chinese, but he won't rat out his friends."

"I think you're wrong. He's a vindictive son of a bitch. He'll find a way to expose us without giving himself up. Maybe he'll turn the information over to someone at CTU or some other agency. God knows he has enough friends in high places. Hell, he could feed the information to David Palmer and let him take care of it. Then he'd just sit back and watch on CNN while we get arrested and charged with embezzlement. I, for one, am not going to let that happen."

"So what's your plan? How do you intend to find Jack?"

"I don't have to find him. He's going to come to me as soon as he realizes that I have his girlfriend."

"How is he going to find out?"

"His girlfriend doesn't know it yet, but she's going to tell me how to contact him. I'll tell him that her only chance to get out of here alive is for him to come and get her," Graem said in a self-satisfied voice. "He'll be here in a shot."

"And what do you plan to do with her? She's going to recognize you. You're going to have to take care of her."

"In due time, but not until she leads me to him. Once I've got him, I can get rid of both of them."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Phillip Bauer hung up the phone and considered his conversation with his older son. Jack and Graem had never gotten along. They were far too different. Graem, the firstborn son of a wealthy executive, seemed to understand from birth his position in life. His doting mother made it clear that the sun rose and set with him. He was all she needed in life. Four years later, Graem's comfortable bubble was broken when his parents announced that he was going to have a baby brother or sister. Graem's dislike of the younger sibling started at that moment and was only heightened several months later when his mother brought home the blond haired, blue eyed baby boy from the hospital.

It seemed to Phillip that the rivalry between his sons started immediately. It got worse when Jack went to school. Although Graem was extremely intelligent, Jack was both intelligent and quick. If the two were caught doing something they shouldn't be, Jack could invent a plausible alibi without batting an eye while Graem simply looked guilty. Jack was more athletic than Graem and excelled at most sports. From an early age, it was clear that both Bauer boys could be introspective and brooding, but as a rule, Jack was well liked and always had a cadre of friends and, as he got older, girlfriends.

Silently Graem seethed. His hatred of his younger brother grew and they fought constantly. As the two boys hit their teenaged years, the Bauer household became an uncomfortable battle ground. By the time Jack turned 18, he had had enough. He broke up with his longtime girlfriend, Marilyn Tyler, who eventually married Graem, and he joined the Army. His father was livid. He had groomed both of his sons to take over his business, but in his heart, he knew that Jack was the one who would lead the company. Jack knew how to lead and he had a head for business. On top of that, he was handsome and could be incredibly charming when he wanted to be. Graem was good with numbers and would make a good chief financial officer, but it was Jack whom Phillip imagined as the next CEO of BXJ. He hoped that Jack joining the Army was just a phase that he was going through, that he was just trying to exert some independence.

When it became clear a few years later that this wasn't the case, Phillip all but cut Jack out of his life. They maintained a strained relationship for many years, mostly because Phillip adored his only granddaughter. But eventually, after Teri's murder, Phillip and Jack became fully estranged. Except for Jack's position on the Board of Directors of BXJ, Phillip had no contact with him. Graem was thrilled to become the only son once again. When CTU contacted Graem and Phillip to tell them that Jack had been killed trying to escape from CTU, Graem displayed no grief. A few days later he made an obligatory appearance at Jack's funeral, annoyed by the fact that his wife Marilyn was grief stricken over the death of her former lover. For once, Graem had gotten the last laugh. Or had he?

Two weeks after Jack's funeral, Graem got a call from an old friend of Jack's named Christopher Henderson. Graem knew Henderson's name for the newspaper. Jack had received all kinds of accolades when he fingered Henderson, his one time mentor, in a sting operation. Henderson was caught stealing money from the government. He plea bargained to avoid prosecution and gave up his co-conspirators without accepting any blame for himself. He lost his job and pension but otherwise walked away unscathed.

Christopher Henderson's call was the start of Graem's worst nightmare. Henderson explained to Graem that he had determined that Jack wasn't really dead. Without knowing all of the details, Henderson gave Graem the essence of what had happened to his brother and said that he knew who was involved in the cover up and that it included former President David Palmer.

At first Graem wasn't sure why Henderson was telling him this. Frankly, it didn't matter if Jack was really dead or if he was just playing possum, either way he was out of Graem's life forever. If what Henderson said was true, Jack couldn't ever afford to surface without having someone, American or Chinese, arrest him and if that happened, his friends would be neck deep in legal trouble as well.

Henderson continued to explain himself to Graem. Prior to Jack's "death", Henderson told him, Jack had become overly interested in BXJ's finances. He had started to do some digging with the IRS and with several banks, as well as creditors and companies who bought services from BXJ. It had become clear to Jack that things at BXJ literally weren't adding up. Income and profits reported didn't match what associated companies were paying BXJ for services. Even looking at the considerable expenses that BXJ had incurred in the past few years, which Jack knew had taken a bite out of the profit margin, the numbers reported to the IRS didn't make sense. There was a profit leak somewhere in the company and Jack intended to find it and fix it. He had been slowed down some by the hours that he was working when he took the job with DoD, but he was still getting closer, Henderson told Graem. It wouldn't have been much longer before Jack figured out that it was Graem and Phillip who were siphoning money off of BXJ's bottom line.

At this point in their conversation, Graem assumed that Henderson was calling to blackmail him. He had somehow hacked into Jack's computer and learned everything that Jack had learned about the creative accounting that Graem was engaged in. Graem figured that Henderson was calling to put the squeeze on him. Henderson, however, had other ideas. He told Graem that Jack, even though everyone thought him dead, was still as dangerous to Graem and Phillip as ever. He would continue his pursuit for the truth in light of the fact that his daughter remained an heir to BXJ. Once he figured out that Graem and Phillip were behind BXJ's financial woes, he would anonymously alert the authorities and sit back quietly while his brother and father fell from grace. Henderson, however, promised Graem that he could prevent that from happening, for a price of course.

Graem listened intently. His hatred for Jack was matched by Henderson's own. Henderson offered to pursue Jack and kill him. What Graem didn't realize was that Henderson would have killed Jack on his own even if Graem hadn't taken the bait, but Graem took it hook, line and sinker. Graem agreed to the plan. The problem was that he had to come up with the million dollars that Henderson wanted. Transfer of that much money from one of his accounts was going to arouse suspicion; he needed his father's help.

Graem went to Phillip with the information he had gotten from Henderson. None of it really surprised Phillip. He knew how resourceful Jack could be. The idea of him cheating death wasn't too hard for him to believe. Phillip, like Graem, was concerned that anyone that resourceful would eventually find a paper trail from BXJ to his own bank account. He agreed with Graem. Until that day, he thought Jack was dead. And in his own way he grieved for him. Now it was his responsibility to protect himself. If that meant killing Jack for real, well, so be it.

Henderson got the money and for it, Graem and Phillip hoped that they would get peace of mind. Henderson was smart enough to take care of Jack and eliminate all of their worries. In addition, Henderson got his revenge. Everyone was satisfied. Now, by kidnapping Audrey Raines, Graem had screwed everything up. Phillip again picked up his phone. This time he called Christopher Henderson.

"Henderson," Phillip said abruptly. "We have a problem."

Phillip, who already knew of Henderson's failed attempt on Jack's life in Chicago, explained what had happened in the last 24 hours.

As expected, Henderson was livid. "I told you that I'd take care of Jack and that I was developing a plan that would be ready to set in motion in the next few months. Until then you and Graem were to sit and wait. That was the deal, Phillip."

"Apparently Graem thought he had a better, quicker solution. Right now he's standing in a swamp full of alligators and I need you to save his ass."

"Forget it," Henderson told him in no uncertain terms. "Graem made this mess; he can figure out how to get out of it."

"This is worth a lot of money to me, Christopher," Phillip said. "You fix this and I'll double your money."

"Not good enough," Henderson said. "I fix this and I become your Chief Operating Officer and I get an equal cut of what you and Graem are skimming every year."

Phillip was backed into a corner. "Deal," he whispered in a rancorous voice. "Just fix it."

Curtis and Bill arrived back at the safe house just as Chloe was calling Buchanan to update him on the investigation.

"Anything new?" Bill asked his lead analyst.

"I checked the airline manifests for every commercial flight that left the region in the last 24 hours and the ones that will leave in the next 24 hours. Graem Bauer's name isn't on any of them. That doesn't mean that he didn't use a chartered flight or fly out of another airport," Chloe told him.

"Right," Bill agreed. He turned to Jack, "When Graem or your father flies for business, do they fly commercial or charter."

"If they're flying a short distance, like to San Francisco, they might fly charter, but they usually fly commercial. At least that's what they did as of a couple of years ago. If things have changed, I wouldn't know."

"Chloe, I think we have to go on the assumption that Graem either left the area by car or he's still here. Have you put out an APB on the car yet?"

"We have, sir. No word on that yet," Chloe answered.

"I think you have to put out an APB on Graem as well. We've got probable cause to search his house. Get a warrant and send a team over, but tell them to stand down until Curtis and I get there. I also want a surveillance team watching Phillip Bauer. They are to report to you immediately if he goes anywhere."

"I'm on it," Chloe said as she hung up.

"Bill, what's going on?" Jack asked. "What did you find out at BXJ?"

Bill looked down for a moment. "Security can't account for the Hummer. They have a set of keys and thought that it was parked in their garage. The only people with access to the second set of keys are your father and brother. Graem's wife says that he went to Eastern Europe on business but your father didn't seem to know anything about the trip. Graem's name doesn't show up on any flight manifests."

"Do you really think that Graem is involved in Audrey's disappearance?" Jack asked incredulously.

"I don't know what to think at this point, Jack. All I know is that BXJ can't account for a vehicle that was likely involved in Audrey's kidnapping. That's my only lead right now and I need to follow it up."

"What possible reason would Graem have for kidnapping Audrey Raines?" Jack asked.

"I don't know, Jack. You tell me. I got a strange feeling when I spoke with your father that he had something to hide. Maybe it's just a father's instinct to cover for his son, but he wasn't telling me everything. Does he have something to hide?"

Jack turned away from Bill and walked a few steps before he spoke. "Before I disappeared, I was looking into the finances at BXJ. The company wasn't turning the profit that it should have been and I wanted to know why. I justified it at the time by saying that I was doing it as a member of the Board of Directors, but I didn't involve any other Board members. The truth is that my daughter stands to inherit half of the company. I wanted to protect Kim's interest. So, I started digging. It didn't take me long to find that money was being funneled out of the company but I couldn't figure out quite where it was going. What I did know, was that Graem is too good with numbers not to have noticed it long before I did. That meant that he had to be involved. Unless I could find out where the money was going, I didn't have any proof of its existence or Graem's culpability. I was in the process of trying to track the money into overseas accounts when I was forced to disappear. Before that, I had already found a couple of small accounts in Switzerland that belonged to my father. So I could tie him to the embezzlement, but I still didn't have Graem. I didn't want to turn my father over to the authorities without having the goods on Graem. I was pretty sure that if I did, Graem would disappear and we'd never see him or the money again. If Graem found out how close I was to blowing the whistle on the whole operation, I could understand that he would want to get to me, but that doesn't make any sense because Graem thinks that I'm dead. What possible reason would he have to go after Audrey?"

"Maybe he thinks you told Audrey what you just told me," Bill speculated.

"If Audrey knew anything don't you think she would have gone to the authorities by now?"

"Jack's right," Curtis said. "Why would Graem wait until he thinks Jack's been dead for a year to grab Audrey? And maybe it's a separate incident, but it seems pretty coincidental that first someone tries to kill Jack in Chicago and now someone goes after Audrey. I'm inclined to believe that the two are related. "Maybe Graem found out that you're alive. He went after you in Chicago and failed and now he grabbed Audrey assuming that you'd come after her."

"It's a good theory, but in order for Jack to go looking for Audrey, he'd have to know where she was being held. Otherwise Graem would have to contact Jack and make some kind of ransom demand." Bill said. "Jack, is there any place you can think of that Graem would be holding Audrey? Did you have some kind of hide out as kids or was there a vacation cottage somewhere remote?"

Jack shook his head. "Graem and I were never close enough to hang out together. My father has a couple of vacation homes but nothing remote. They aren't places where you could take a hostage."

"Maybe Graem thinks Audrey will tell him how to get in touch with Jack," Chase offered.

Jack's eyes flashed. "You mean torture her for information."

Chase cast his eyes down like a chastised child. "I wasn't going to put it that way."

"Does Audrey have a way to contact you?" Bill asked.

"She gave me a scramble phone. She said when she got all of the arrangements together to relocate me out of the country that she would call me and tell me where to pick up my transportation."

"Chase, call Chloe and have her set up a trace on that scramble phone. That won't be easy, but she'll be able to do it. If Audrey gives Graem the number, we'll be ready for his call."

"What can I do to help?" Jack asked.

"Sit tight and maintain the security here. Tony and Michelle will be here in a couple of hours to help with that. In the meantime all you can do is wait for any contact from Graem," Bill told him knowing full well that it wasn't the answer that Jack wanted.

Jack nodded, uncharacteristically accepting the passive role he had been given. "Fine, but if you get any information at all that we can act on I want to know about it."

Bill cocked his head slightly to one side. "Jack, forgive me for saying this, but you aren't exactly in a position to tell me what to do. Right now most of the world thinks that you're dead and if the Chinese or American governments find out otherwise, they're going to take you into custody. I will keep you in the loop, I promise you that, but any operation is going forward only at my discretion," Bill said firmly.

"Audrey Raines was kidnapped because of me," Jack hissed angrily. "I have a right to know what is going on."

"Audrey Raines _may have been _kidnapped because of you," Bill corrected still not losing his temper. "Right now we don't know why Audrey was kidnapped. Finding her is my responsibility. I've already told you that I'll keep you in the loop." The current and former CTU directors stared at each other for a moment before Jack broke the gaze and looked away. Bill was right and Jack knew it. He would be doing the job the exact same way if he were CTU director.

"Curtis and I are going to head over to your brother's house. I'll let you know if we find anything," Bill said quietly.

Audrey sat bound to a chair in a room in the corner of the old warehouse. Her back was to the open door but she couldn't hear anyone outside of it. Graem had taken the gag from her mouth but since there was no one to talk to and no one to hear her if she screamed, she sat in silence. The room was windowless, so she couldn't tell if it was light or dark outside. Audrey had already started to lose track of time, but she thought she had been sitting there for the last couple of hours. Graem had walked away some time before to talk on the phone and he hadn't come back since. He had made his plan clear to her. She was here as bait to draw Jack into Graem's spider web. She wasn't sure how she could stop it from happening, but she had to find a way. Audrey craned her neck to see if anyone was near by. Not seeing Graem or anyone else, she began tugging on the duct tape that held her wrists to the chair.

"Pointless, Ms. Raines," Graem said from behind her. "You can't get free and even if you did, where would you go? You're locked in." He pulled keys from his pocket and dangled them in front of her face. "You're not going anywhere until you tell me how I can get in touch with Jack."

"You're wasting your time. I can't get in touch with him."

Graem slapped her face hard. Tears rose in Audrey's eyes. "I'm not stupid, Audrey. Jack probably told you that I was, but I'm not. You were with him last night. You obviously know how to get in touch with him."

Audrey swallowed her emotion. "I staked out his job site and followed him home, but I can assure you that he's not at work or home right now. I'm sure by now that my car has been found and I've been reported missing. When the daughter of the Secretary of Defense disappears, it makes the news. As soon as Jack heard it he got the hell out of Mojave. He isn't sitting around waiting for you to show up on his doorstep."

"And you expect me to believe that you don't have any other way to contact your beloved Jack. You came 3000 miles across the country to spend one night with him and you don't have any way to contact him? That doesn't sound right even to a stupid guy like me, Audrey." Graem closed the distance between them and leaned close to Audrey's ear. He whispered; his tone mocking. "So tell me, was last night worth the trip? Is my brother so good that it was worth ending up here? I hope that was the best sex of your life because he won't be around long enough for you to do it again."

Audrey clenched her jaw and tried to keep her breathing normal. There was no point in reacting to Graem. Her only hope now was to stay calm, find a way out and warn Jack. She could tell that Graem was annoyed by her lack of reaction. That was good. The more she could throw him off of his game, the more likely it was that he would become distracted and slip up.

Graem stalked away, but he returned quickly this time. He apparently had gone to the Hummer to retrieve her bag and he clutched it in one hand as he approached her. Graem crouched in front of her and emptied the contents onto the warehouse floor. There was little of interest in the bag: a small package of tissues, computer generated directions from LA to Mojave, a couple of pens and a key chain along with Audrey's cell phone and wallet. Graem went through the wallet coming up with a little over a hundred dollars in cash along with her credit cards and identification. He opened the cell phone and began going through her contact list and recent calls.

"What do you think you're going to find?" Audrey taunted him. "Do you think I stored Jack's phone number in my contact list? Apparently you think I'm stupid. I already told you. I have no way to get in touch with Jack. That's the way he wanted it." She hoped that she was a convincing liar. She could contact Jack through the scramble phone, the number to which she had committed to memory.

Graem became enraged as he realized that he was at a dead end. He jumped to his feet and grabbed Audrey by the throat. "Tell me how to find him!" he screamed in her face. "You know how to find him, you bitch, now tell me!"

Audrey gasped for breath. "I don't know how to find him," she forced the words through her teeth. She was scared but remained defiant. If she told Graem how to find Jack, she was as good as dead, so she had to keep stringing him along. Graem's fingers were tightening on her neck and he was screaming in her face again, but she was too scared to hear what he was saying. "Please, stop," she tried to beg, but the words wouldn't form.

"Let go of her, Graem!" care a voice from the doorway behind her. "Let go of her! She's no good to us dead. Jack isn't going to come for her if she's dead."

Audrey was almost ready to pass out when the felt Graem's hands being yanked away from her throat. Her head fell forward as she coughed and gasped, desperate for air.

"She no good to us dead, you fool," the angry voice said again.

Audrey looked up. She recognized the man now in front of her who was holding Graem back. She had seen Christopher Henderson at Jack's funeral. He, like Graem, had seemed bored as he stood at the graveside. She noticed that both he and his wife seemed close to Kim and had spent a long time consoling her. Audrey asked Tony who the man was and he identified Henderson and explained what had transpired between Jack and Christopher Audrey knew that Henderson was no fan of Jack's.

"Let me go, Christopher," Graem cried. "She's going to tell me how to get to Jack!"

"You're right. She is," Henderson said almost soothingly. "But she won't tell you that way. I know how to get through to her."

Audrey watched Henderson closely. He had just saved her life, that much she knew, but that didn't mean that she wasn't afraid of him. Graem Bauer was crazy, but Henderson was a former government agent. He knew how to extract information. Graem stopped struggling and Henderson let him go. He approached Audrey slowly and she could feel her already bounding heart pick up the pace a bit more.

"Ms. Raines," he said softly. "Forgive Graem. He gets a little crazy sometimes. I won't let him do that again."

Audrey knew what he was doing. He was trying to get her to relax and feel comfortable with him. Henderson knelt down in front of her so they were almost on the same level. "I don't want to hurt you. I just want to know how to contact Jack so we can let you go. You want us to let you go, don't you? You don't need to be a part of this. Our beef is with Jack, not with you. We don't want to hurt you. If you just tell me where Jack is, I'll let you go. And I know you won't go to the authorities, because if you do, we'll have to kill you. You understand, don't you? You give us Jack and we let you go."

"Never," Audrey said quietly but clearly.

"I think I can convince you," Henderson said as he caressed her face.

Audrey felt tears leap to her eyes and slip down her face. She cringed against his touch. Henderson knew how to get to her. He ran his hands softly through her hair. "Is that how Jack touches you?"

A whimper involuntarily slipped from between Audrey's lips.

"It is, isn't it," Henderson said sweetly with his face barely inches from hers. His hands slipped effortlessly from her hair down her neck and to her breasts.

Audrey's lip quivered and she began to sob. "Please don't do this," she begged between sobs.

"I'll stop if you just tell me how to find Jack," he whispered again as he kissed her neck.

Audrey jerked her head away. "No! I won't tell you anything!"

Henderson slowly pulled away from her. "I think you will after you have some time to think about it," he said in an almost tender voice. "You just sit here for a while and think it over. You tell me where Jack is or I come back for more of that lovely body. And if you think it will end there, you're wrong. I'm sure Graem would like to take a turn and we have lots of other not so nice guys who work for us who would like to take turns, too. In the end, Audrey, Jack is going to die no matter what you do. Why should you end up ravaged trying to protect him?"

Audrey could think of nothing to say. She sobbed quietly with her head down.

"You take some time and think," he told her. "Turn out the lights," he said to Graem. "Leave her in here in the dark for a few hours and see if she changes her tune."

Audrey heard the door close behind her and started crying harder. She knew what sensory deprivation could do to you. No light, no sound, it would all cause disorientation. Not to mention that she was beginning to get hungry and had been thirsty for some time already. She knew that they had no intention of feeding her or letting her drink. She was exhausted from lack of sleep and tired of sitting in one position. Add all of that to the fear that Henderson had created in her and there was no telling how long she could hold out before they finally coaxed her to give up the information that they needed.

The day dragged on for Jack. It was around 4:30 when Tony and Michelle arrived at the safe house. Jack was both glad to see them and apologetic that they had been forced to fly cross country because of him. He smiled as he hugged and kissed Michelle and pressed a hand softly against her stomach which now bulged largely in front of her. Tony and Michelle both beamed. As they did, Jack wondered if he and Audrey would ever have the chance to know that same happiness.

They spent a few minutes catching up before they sat at the kitchen table to discuss all that had happened in the last few hours. They spoke with Chloe, who had nothing new to offer them. While they were talking to Chloe, Bill and Curtis returned from the search of Graem's house. It was fruitless; they found nothing and Bill and Curtis were both beginning to allow the frustration of the day to show on their faces. Bill didn't have much time to consider his frustration. He needed to get back to CTU. Secretary Heller had just arrived in LA and he expected an immediate update on the situation.

"Bill," Jack said as Buchanan started for the door. "I've been thinking. You asked if there was a place that I thought Graem might use as a hide out and I might have come up with something."

"Really? Where is it?"

"It's a warehouse at the far end of an industrial park. BXJ rented this warehouse for about 15 or 20 years. It was becoming pretty dilapidated and the owner refused to do the repairs that my father asked for. The Board of Directors agreed to allow BXJ to build a warehouse of its own. We did that and ended the rental agreement on this other warehouse. Unless the warehouse owner made some repairs, I would think that he had trouble renting the place. If the place is still empty, I could see Graem using it. I'd be willing to bet that he still has a set or two of keys and if there isn't a new tenant, then the owner may not have changed the locks. I think it's worth checking into."

Bill looked skeptical. "That's quite a long shot, Jack. Give me the address. I'll have Chloe contact the owner and see if it's been rented. Unless the owner agrees voluntarily to have CTU search it. I doubt that we'll be able to get a search warrant."

"Do what you can, but I think this is worth a shot," Jack said adamantly. He wrote the address on a piece of paper and handed it to Bill.

The evening wore on and Audrey sat alone in the dark room in the warehouse. She had cried for a while when Henderson first locked her in the room, but once her initial crying spell ended, her mind seemed to clear and she was able to think. The goal of every captive was self preservation and Audrey was no different. The problem was that she didn't think that was possible. She had two choices right now: give Graem the information he wanted to contact Jack or remain silent. Either way she would end up dead, the only difference was that if she gave up the information, Jack would die, too. And Audrey decided that that was not going to happen. She wasn't giving up any important information regardless of what they did to her. She would let them think they were getting to her. She would tell them about the scramble phone, but deny that she knew the phone number. That was plausible. It would also keep them satisfied for a while and maybe, just maybe give the authorities some additional time to find her.

Audrey had no idea what time it was when she heard the door behind her open and quiet footsteps approach.

"We gave you some time, Audrey," Graem said. He began stroking her hair and Audrey involuntarily flinched.

Despite her initial reaction, she took a breath and got her emotions under control. She was almost grateful that it was Graem who came in rather than Henderson. Graem was an amateur at this very dangerous game. She sat tense allowing Graem to think that he was gaining headway. He stroked her neck with something soft, probably a feather.

She flinched again, reviled by his touch, but internally strong. "Please stop," she begged. "I'll tell you what I know. I'll tell you. Just stop and let me out of here."

"That's it, Audrey. You can save yourself. Just tell me how to contact Jack."

"I gave him a scramble phone," she whimpered. "I told him I'd call him."

"Good. Now give me the phone number and this will all be over."

"I don't know it," Audrey sobbed.

"You don't know it?" Graem asked. "You're a smart lady, Audrey. Do you honestly think that believe that you don't remember a ten digit phone number? Give me the number and this will end! Until then it's only going to get worse." With that, Graem came around in front of Audrey and faced her. "Now, tell me the number."

"I told you; I don't know it. If I knew it don't you think I'd tell you? I just want you to let me go. Please, you have to believe me," Audrey continued lying.

Graem was getting frantic. The information was so close that he could almost touch it but he still didn't have what he needed. "Alright. Alright," he said as he paced along a path in front of Audrey. "If you didn't memorize the number, you had to write it down somewhere. Where did you put it? Is it stored in your PDA? Do you have it written down?" Audrey could tell that he was trying to stay calm but anger was overtaking him.

"It's on a slip of paper on my desk," she told him.

"On your desk!" he roared. "How am I supposed to get it from your desk?" Graem stopped pacing. He leaned forward with his hands on Audrey's shoulders.

"I don't know," Audrey cried convincingly. "You asked me how to get in touch with Jack and I told you. Please just let me go. I can't help you any more."

"Where did you get the phone? Who gave you the phone? It's a scramble phone. You don't just go into the wireless store and buy it. Where did you get it?"

She couldn't tell Graem that Chloe had arranged for the phone. If he knew that, then Chloe would be in danger as well. "I stole it," she told him.

"You stole it? Like a common thief, Audrey. I don't believe that. You're much too sophisticated and well connected to steal a phone. Now tell me where the phone is!" His hands still on Audrey's shoulders, Graem pushed her, along with the chair she was sitting in, backwards across the cement floor, slamming it into the wall. Audrey's head hit the wall hard stunning her. "Maybe that will knock some sense into you! Now tell me where you got the phone."

The blow to the head hurt, but Audrey was still thinking clearly. "I stole it from DoD. I couldn't tell anyone why I needed it or I would have blown Jack's cover. I stole it and I knew that it would be months before anyone noticed that one phone was gone and deleted the phone number from the system. Until then, Jack could use it if he needed it and no one could trace his calls."

Graem clearly bought Audrey's story and he was stymied. He had no idea how to get the phone number from Audrey's desk in Washington. He paced again this time taking out his phone and dialing. "Christopher, I think we've got something," he said. He went on to tell Henderson about the information that he had gotten from Audrey. "So, if we can get into her office. The phone number is on her desk."

Audrey almost had a stifle a laugh. The thought of Graem trying to break into the DoD was truly laughable. Based on Graem's end of the conversation, Henderson thought the same thing. "I don't know how we're going to get in the office, Christopher. That's why I called you. Maybe you could have someone pose as a repair person and get in. He could say that he had to work on the computer or the phone in Audrey's office."

Again Audrey nearly laughed. She was pretty sure that once her abduction was reported that her office would be sealed off. And again judging from Graem's end of the conversation, Henderson was telling him just that.

"Then, I don't know how we're going to get the phone number, but we have to come up with something," he told Henderson in an exasperated voice. "Call me when you've got something!" Graem said and then hung up. He took a breath and then turned to Audrey.

"Okay," he said approaching her and checking to make sure that she was securely bound to the chair. "You just sit here a little while longer and we'll see if something jogs your memory and you can come up with that phone number."

"Please," Audrey begged still trying to play the game. "Please, can't you untie me? You've got me locked in this room. Where do you think I'm going to go? Please untie me and let me move around."

"Forget it! You give me what I need and you get to go free. Until then, you're stuck here." Graem walked away and closed the door, locking it behind him.

Audrey swallowed hard and finally allowed herself to breathe, proud of the way she was handling the situation. Now the waiting started again. She had done all that she could do to help herself. The rest was up to CTU or whoever was trying to find her. At least now she knew what time it was. She was able to see the time on Graem's phone when he opened it. It was 9:30. Just 24 hours earlier, she was sitting with Jack in his apartment explaining the plan that would take him to safety. Now she had to face the fact that, instead of saving him, her plan had simply put him in more danger.

The mood at the safe house was gloomy. They had no leads to go on and no ransom demands had been made. Bill had Chloe looked into Jack's suspicions regarding the warehouse. She made contact with the owner's office. The woman they spoke with confirmed that the building was not rented at the time, but the owner was out of town and there was no on available who could authorize a search of the property. With no evidence that there was any foul play at the site, Bill couldn't convince a judge to give him a search warrant. On a whim, he sent a team to look over the perimeter of the property looking for any evidence that Graem or Audrey was there. The team found nothing but what appeared to be a dilapidated and abandoned warehouse, thus leading to yet another dead end.

With nothing else to do, they made plans for security watches on the safe house for the night. Shifts would be four hours long. They all agreed that Michelle should go to bed. Tony, Chase and Jack would take the midnight to four shift. Curtis and Bill would return for the four to eight shift. Jack offered to stay up and work that shift with them. Protocol required three agents on duty at all time, he reminded them and he wouldn't be able to sleep anyway. He was too worried about Audrey. Security plans now set, Curtis and Bill left for a few hours to get some sleep and return at 4 am.

Tony, Chase and Jack spent their four hour shift largely in silence. Despite the fact that the three had much catching up to do, none of them felt like talking. They did their job with routine sweeps of the exits and the perimeter of the house. The night was quiet and it took all of their effort to remain focused. Tony and Chase were particularly happy to see Curtis and Bill arrive around 3:50.

"Go to bed," Bill told them as he went to the kitchen to make coffee. "We'll see you in the morning. You guys need some coffee?" he asked Curtis and Jack.

"None for me," Jack said. "I'm already too wired."

"I'll drink some," Curtis said. "Who's doing the first perimeter sweep?"

"I'll do it," Jack offered. "Tony and Chase did the last two. You guys relax."

Bill and Curtis agreed and took up their posts near windows while they waited for the coffee to brew. Jack picked up a flashlight and gun and headed for the back door. He rounded the property, reporting back to Curtis through his comm unit and as expected, found nothing. He re-entered the rear of the house.

"All clear," he called to Bill and Curtis. "I'll be out in a minute." Jack headed for the bathroom. Once inside, he turned on the exhaust fan and waited for a moment. Sure that Bill and Curtis were otherwise occupied with manning their posts, Jack opened the bathroom door and slipped out and closed the door behind him. He headed for a closet where weapons and supplies were kept. He stepped into the closet and closed the door. He turned the flashlight on to the lowest setting and quickly found what he was looking for. It was a first aid kit. Not exactly a run-of-the-mill first aid kit that someone would keep in a medicine cabinet, no, this was a CTU first aid kit that included enough equipment to do minor surgery in the field. Jack dug through it and pulled out a bottle of capsules. The bottle was labeled "pentobarbital". It was a barbiturate once used as a sleeping pill. Its purpose in the first aid kit was to sedate a wounded agent for transport to a medical facility. Jack slipped the bottle into his pocket and peeked out into the hallway. No one was nearby. He left the closet and returned to the bathroom where he flushed the toilet, washed his hands and turned off the fan. He returned to the front of the house to find Bill and Curtis right where he had left them.

"Maybe I do need some coffee," he said as he entered the kitchen. "Can I pour cups for you two?"

"Is it finished brewing?" Bill asked.

"Yeah, looks like it just finished. Smells a little strong, Bill. How much did you put in here?" Jack said as he took three cups from the cupboard and set them on the counter. He knew that the drug was going to give the coffee a bitter taste and he wanted to give Bill and Curtis the impression that the bitterness was simply due to excessive coffee in too little water.

"It's four o'clock in the morning," Bill noted. "I figured that strong was good."

Jack emptied the contents of a capsule into each of two cups and then filled them with coffee. "Here," he said taking the cups to Bill and Curtis. "Drink up. We need to stay awake."

Jack anxiously took up his own post, a position that allowed him to watch Bill and Curtis. Within fifteen minutes Jack could tell that they were both fighting sleep. And within a half hour, both were out cold. Jack smiled to himself. The plan had worked beautifully. He found Bill's jacket and dug the car keys from the pocket. He then returned quietly to the supply closet and armed himself with guns and ammunition, explosive devices and communications equipment. He stuffed it all in an olive drab bag and slung it over his shoulder. Keys in hand, Jack checked the front door and, finding it clear, headed out into the cool night. Without looking back, Jack got into the driver's side of Bill's CTU-issued car, started it and, without headlights, backed out of the driveway and into the street. He was free and he was going to rescue Audrey.

_For those of you who have read my other stories, I'm sorry about using the drugged coffee trick for a second time! I was going to have Jack shoot Curtis and Bill with a tranquilizer gun (like he did to George Mason in season 1) but that trick had obviously been used before and I simply couldn't bring myself to have Jack shoot my dear Bill with anything even if it wasn't fatal. I know it was cheap, but I resorted to drugged coffee. Hope you'll forgive me!_


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Jack flicked on the car's headlights as soon as he was several hundred feet past the safe house. Another mile or so up the road, Jack found a shopping center. The parking lot was deserted, but remained well lit. After checking his rear view mirror to make sure that he hadn't been followed, Jack parked the car near a light. He pulled the lever inside of the car to release the hood, took a screwdriver from his bag and got out of the car. Again he checked to make sure that he was alone and once satisfied that he was, he lifted the car's hood and reached down along the side of the engine. His fingers quickly located the satellite transmitter that was attached to all CTU vehicles. Using the screwdriver, he easily pried the object free, dropped it on the pavement and crushed it under his heel. He brushed off his hands on his pants, closed the hood and slipped back into the driver's seat. As he got back into the car, Jack's eyes fell on the dashboard clock. It was already 5:15. His plan had worked but it had taken longer than he had hoped. That only gave him 30 or 35 minutes to get to the warehouse under the cover of darkness. Fortunately, other than some very early morning commuters, there would be little traffic at this time of the day. He would be able to get from the northern suburb of Los Angeles where the safe house was located to the warehouse's industrial park in that period of time, but he would have little time to spare.

Michelle stretched and rolled over in bed looking for a comfortable position. It was only 5:30 and she was fully awake. Normally a good sleeper, the night in an unfamiliar bed and her advancing pregnancy resulted in a fitful sleep. It didn't help that Tony had climbed into bed around 4 o'clock and disturbed her as she had finally fallen into a deep sleep. Now her bladder was full, or at least it felt full from the baby pressing down on it, and she decided to get up and go to the bathroom. She reached for her robe, hoisted herself out of bed, reminding herself that she only had a few more weeks of feeling like a beached whale, and headed for the attached bathroom.

Having finished in the bathroom, Michelle stepped back into the bedroom and eyed up her side of the bed. In her brief absence, Tony had taken the opportunity to stretch out flat on his back and take up about half of her side of the bed. On top of that, he was now snoring softly. Michelle smiled and shook her head. At least one of them was sleeping. It was pointless for her to get back in bed, so she slipped into clothes, pulled her hair into a messy bun and left the bedroom.

Not wanting to take tired, on-edge federal agents by surprise, Michelle announced herself after taking just a few steps down the hall. "Good morning," she called quietly. The lack of response surprised her. "Good morning," she called again, this time a little louder.

By that time, Michelle was standing in the back of the living room and she knew that something was wrong. Bill sat slouched in a chair near the window, his head resting against the back of the chair.

"Bill!" she called, not quite sure if he was even alive. "Jack! Curtis! Where are you?" she shouted as she ran to Bill. Her training took over. Instinctively she pressed fingers to his neck to make sure that he was alive. She felt herself relax a bit as soon as she detected a pulse and slow, steady breathing. Grabbing his shoulders, Michelle shook him gently. "Bill," she said as she shook him. "Wake up!"

Bill moaned quietly but didn't even open his eyes. Michelle ran to the next room to find Curtis in the same condition. Unable to wake him either, she began searching the house for Jack. She crossed through the kitchen and, as she did, she caught sight of the bottle of sedatives sitting on the counter next to the coffee pot.

"Damn you, Jack!" Michelle muttered with a slight smile on her face. Frankly, she wasn't all that surprised and she knew that if Tony were faced with the same situation, he would have done the same thing. Now she, Tony, Chase and Chloe were left to make sure that Jack didn't get himself killed trying to rescue Audrey.

Michelle headed for the master bedroom to wake Tony. She leaned over him and shook him gently. "Tony, wake up, honey. You've got to get up. We've got a problem."

Tony, who had been on edge for weeks as the baby's due date approached, was out of bed like a shot. "It's okay, baby," he exclaimed as he helped Michelle sit down on the bed. "You sit here. I'll get dressed and we'll be at the hospital as soon as possible. How close are the contractions? Have you been timing them? When did they start? Why didn't you wake me earlier?" he peppered her with questions as he ran around the room in search of clothes. 

"Tony, calm down. I'm not in labor. That's not the problem."

"Jesus, Michelle! You scared the hell out of me. What's going on? Why did you wake me up?" Tony was starting to breathe normally.

"Jack drugged Bill and Curtis and took off."

Tony, like Michelle, almost smiled as he shook his head. "I've lost my edge. Five years ago I would have seen that one coming."

"You may have, but Bill and Curtis didn't. They don't know him well enough. What's our next move?"

"Call Chloe. I talked to her at about 2 o'clock. She was going home to shower and change, but she said she should be back to CTU by 5 o'clock. I'll wake Chase up."

"Got it," Michelle said as she headed for the bedroom door. "I'll have Chloe activate the transponder in Bill's car so we can get a location on Jack."

"And I thought I had lost my edge!" Tony laughed. "Honey, this is Jack we're talking about. He probably destroyed the transponder before he left the driveway."

Michelle shook her head. "You're right. For a moment there I forgot how Jack thinks. In that case, do you have any idea where Jack might have gone?"

"Yeah, he went to the warehouse that he told Bill about."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely. Trust me. He's on his way to the warehouse."

Within minutes Chase was awake and dressed in a dark tee shirt and gray fatigues. He was at the supply closet, as Jack had been earlier, selecting arms and explosives and cursing Jack for taking all of the good stuff. He felt woefully unprepared as he packed what few items were left.

Tony was in the kitchen on the speaker phone with Chloe who had already confirmed that Bill's car transponder was no longer functional. "Okay, Chloe," Tony said in a command voice. "Chase and I will head over to the warehouse to help Jack. I need you to send a tac team over there as back up. Tell them to stay on the perimeter. Don't send them in unless I ask for help. I don't want any more people than necessary finding out that Jack is alive."

"I can't dispatch a tac team, Tony. Only Buchanan or Manning can do that and they're both unconscious," Chloe reminded him in a tone that made Tony remember why he and Chloe had never gotten along very well.

"Chloe! Jack is out there with no back up! If Buchanan was able to dispatch the tac team he would, so pretend that he gave you the order and do it! When he wakes up I'll take full responsibility. Try and remember that Secretary Heller's daughter has been kidnapped and Heller outranks all of us! If you want someone to give the okay on a tac team, call Heller, I'm sure he'll give you his blessing!"

"Alright," Chloe said reluctantly. "I'll send them out now, but considering where that warehouse is located, the ETA is going to be over a half hour unless they go in by air and I won't order an air assault without Buchanan's permission."

"Fine, send them by ground, but tell them to make it fast. Chase and I are ready to leave now," Tony said as he adjusted his bullet-proof vest. "We'll be on comm. Michelle will man the communications at the house." He glanced at his wife who was sitting at the kitchen table in front of a laptop. Bill had given her provisional security clearance the day before, so she was able to uplink with CTU and help monitor the operation. A nervousness that he hadn't felt during his CTU years suddenly overtook him. There was no denying that what he was about to do was dangerous but he had been on dangerous missions before. Only this time was different. This time he had an unborn son waiting for him to come home.

Jack arrived at the warehouse just before dawn. He doused his headlights well in advance of his approach and pulled up on a concrete pad near the bay doors. Jack knew the floor plan of the warehouse. The two small offices used by the warehouse managers, were located at the opposite end of the building from the bay doors and the loading dock. If Graem was inside, he was most likely using one of the offices. Right now Jack was hoping that he was sleeping. Other than the offices and two rooms used for secured storage, the warehouse was pretty much just open space. There were some alcoves off of the main floor, but not many places to hide.

Jack stepped closer to the building and set down his bag. From it he withdrew a set of picks. He had decided to enter the building through an entrance just to the left of the bay doors. That way, if Graem was in the far off offices, he would slip unnoticed into the building. The old lock was stiff, but with some effort, Jack was able to unlock it. Carefully, he opened the door just enough to step inside.

The warehouse was incredibly dark. The sun was just beginning to rise and not creating enough light yet to penetrate the few windows that dotted the warehouse walls. Jack pressed himself against the wall and began moving along it. He rounded the wall to his left to enter the loading dock and bay. He flipped on his flashlight briefly to illuminate the area. The black hummer with its smashed driver's side sat alone. Jack circled the car finding one body lying across the driver's seat and a second one in the rear of the vehicle. Both were killed by a single gunshot. Jack thought he recognized the one in the driver's seat as a handyman that used to work for Graem in and around the warehouse.

Jack moved away from the car to continue searching the warehouse. He walked stealthily along trying to stay as quiet as possible. He came to the first of the two rooms used for secure storage. He took a deep breath as he put a gloved left hand on the door knob; his weapon clutched in his right. The knob turned easily. Jack pulled open the door and spun into the room. Once inside he pulled a flashlight from his pocket and shone it around the room. Empty. He suspected as much. Had Graem been holding Audrey in the room it would likely have been locked.

Jack left the room and continued along to the other secure room. This one was locked. He again took out a set of picks and within seconds heard the lock slide free. Jack entered the room, gun raised and ready. He heard an audible gasp behind him and turned to shine the flashlight on its source.

"Jack!" Audrey exclaimed quietly. She closed her eyes for a second relieved to finally see him. "How did you find me?"

Jack dropped to his knees and took Audrey's face in his hands. He ignored her questions and kissed her hard. "Are you alright? Did he hurt you?"

"No, I'm fine," Audrey assured him. "You have to get out of here. If Graem finds you here he'll kill you. He won't hurt me until I lead him to you. Get out now before he finds you."

"No! I'm not leaving you here, Audrey. Do you hear me? We're getting out of here together." Jack didn't give Audrey a chance to answer. He took a knife from his bag and cut the duct tape that was binding her wrists and ankles to the chair. Once free, he helped her to a standing position. "Here, put this on," Jack said as he stripped off his flak jacket and started putting it on Audrey.

"What about you? You need one, too."

"I'll be fine. I packed up so fast that I forgot to get a second one. You wear this one." Again Jack didn't give her time to answer. He leaned carefully out of the door and made sure no one was around. Taking Audrey's hand, he started leading her back toward the door he had used to enter the warehouse. They slowed as they neared one of the alcoves. Jack turned into the alcove and swept his flashlight beam, followed by his gun, across it. Finding it clear, he drew Audrey into the alcove and pressed her gently to the wall. "Stay here," he whispered. He pointed across the empty expanse of floor standing between them and the door. "When I get to the door and signal you, you run to me as fast as you can. I'll be able to cover you if Graem shows up. Do you understand?"

Audrey nodded. "Be careful," she whispered.

Jack nodded in return. Enough sunlight was now coming through the few warehouse windows to adequately illuminate the floor, while at the same time making creepy shadows along the floor and walls. Audrey watched nervously as Jack trotted across to the door, his gun drawn and ready to fire the entire time. He reached the door and crouched in front of it, then motioned to Audrey to come across. Audrey had only taken about two steps when movement in the shadows behind her caught Jack's eye.

"That's far enough, Audrey. You can stop right there or I'll shoot." It was Graem's voice and it was coming from behind Audrey. Graem came up behind her, put his left arm around her waist and pulled her securely against his body, while he pressed the gun against her temple. "Good to see you, Jack. I guess those rumors of your death were greatly exaggerated."

"Let her go, Graem. She's not involved in this. This is between you and me. Don't hide behind an innocent person."

Graem ignored him. "How chivalrous of you to give her a flak jacket and not have one for yourself. That makes it so much easier to kill you."

"Please, don't kill him. We'll do whatever you want. Just don't kill him!" Audrey begged.

"Groveling just isn't becoming to a woman of your stature, Audrey," Graem noted in a condescending voice. "Back away from the door, Jack." Graem motioned carelessly with his gun.

With the gun no longer pointed at her head, Audrey bent her knee and drove her heel hard into Graem's foot. He pulled back and cried out in pain. As he did, Audrey started running toward Jack. She heard the gunshot more than felt it, but the next thing she knew, she was sprawled out, face down, on the cement floor, a searing pain going through her left thigh. It was then that she heard the second gunshot and she watched Graem go down next to her. Audrey, wanting to be as far from Graem as she could be, tried to scramble away, but pain slowed her down.

"Not so fast, Audrey," Graem said as he pulled her back down next to him. "Your boyfriend isn't always such a great shot." Graem was bleeding from what appeared to be a deep flesh wound in his side. She knew that, like her own leg wound, it hurt, but it wouldn't be fatal. Graem pulled himself into a sitting position with Audrey in front of him. "Try it again and the next time I'll kill you," Graem told her. "Now, Jack, drop your gun. I just proved to you that I'm not afraid to use mine. Drop yours or she's dead."

Jack did as he was told and set the gun on the floor in front of him.

"Kick it toward me," Graem directed him.

Again, Jack followed Graem's orders and gently kicked the gun about half way between the two of them. It was out of his own reach, but it was also out of Graem's reach.

"Good," Graem said in a self-satisfied voice. "Now I get to watch you die. I've waited a lifetime for this." Without another word he took the gun away from Audrey's head and pointed it toward Jack, firing without so much as stopping to give it a second's consideration.

The bullet hit Jack in the right upper chest. He cried out weakly and slumped back against the door.

"Jack! No!" Audrey screamed and began crying. "Oh, God, Jack! No!" she sobbed.

Graem kept a grip on Audrey and pressed the gun against her side. "Stand up," he demanded. With both of them in pain, the attempt to stand was an awkward one. Graem was forced to loosen his grip on Audrey. She seized the opportunity and pulled hard away from him, knocking him backward as she did. Once free of Graem's hold, Audrey lunged for the gun Jack had kicked across the floor. Ignoring the pain in her leg, she rolled over on the floor and set herself, gun raised defensively. By that time, Graem had begun to stand again and was about to take aim. Audrey could feel herself shaking as she readied the gun to fire.

"Graem! Audrey! Stop! Put down your weapons!" Phillip Bauer screamed as he ran across the warehouse floor. His own gun was drawn. "Graem, what have you done?" he cried.

Audrey relaxed and lowered her gun. She watched Phillip run toward them and look back and forth between Jack and Graem.

"I saved us, Dad. Jack's dead. All we have to do now is kill Audrey and get rid of the bodies and no one will ever know. The money's in numbered accounts. No one can prove that we took it," Graem told his father.

"You killed your brother? What were you thinking?" Phillip asked.

Graem lowered his gun. His face dropped in disappointment. "I thought that was what you wanted. I thought you wanted us to be free of him."

"I did," Phillip agreed. "But I didn't want you to kill him. Henderson was supposed to take care of that. You've disgraced us, Graem. CTU already linked the Hummer to you. How long do you think it's going to take for them to find the evidence to prove that you killed Jack and Audrey? No, Graem, I won't let you bring BXJ down." Phillip raised his gun suddenly and fired at nearly point blank range into Graem's chest. Audrey screamed as she watched Graem crumble to the floor.

"He shot his brother and he had a gun on me. I shot him in self defense, Audrey," Phillip said in an unemotional voice. "You saw me, didn't you?" he asked her as he pulled her to her feet.

"Yes," she whispered in a shaky voice.

"Good. We'll get you some medical attention for that leg. You're losing a lot of blood," Phillip said kindly. He started leading Audrey toward the other side of the warehouse when they both heard the sound behind them.

"Dad," Jack breathed softly. "Help me."

Phillip spun around letting go of Audrey as he turned. Unable to maintain any weight on her injured leg, Audrey collapsed to the ground. "Jack," she gasped thankfully. "You're alive! Thank God! We have to help him," she said to Phillip as she attempted to crawl toward Jack.

"Just stay where you are, Audrey," Phillip commanded in a gentle voice. Then he turned his attention back to Jack. "That's a nasty gunshot wound, Jack. It's a good thing I got here when I did. Any longer and you would have been dead," he commented casually.

"Call 911!" Audrey begged not understanding why Phillip wasn't on his phone. "He'll die without help. You have to call for help!"

"Please, Dad," Jack whispered, his voice fainter this time. "I need help."

"Relax, Jack. I'll take care of everything. Just close your eyes and relax," Phillip told him.

Jack nodded almost imperceptibly and allowed his head to rest awkwardly against the wall.

"Just relax," Phillip said again. As he did, he raised his gun slowly and aimed at Jack's chest.

Jack opened his eyes as he heard the shot ring out. He could barely focus and thought he might be dreaming as he watched his father, who had been standing over him, collapse in a heap on the floor next to him. Blood drained from the corner of his mouth. Jack looked past the lifeless body to see Audrey sitting on the floor shaking uncontrollably, the gun still extended in front of her.

"He was going to kill you, Jack," she sobbed. "He was going to shoot you. I had to do it. I'm sorry," she cried.

"Come here," Jack whispered.

Audrey crawled painfully across the floor to where Jack was lying, managing to avoid Phillip's body along the way. Jack reached for her and pulled her into his arms. "You did the right thing," he told her. "Now you have to get help." He tried unsuccessfully to reach for his phone.

"I've got it," Audrey told him as she pulled the phone from his pocket. "I'll call 911."

Jack reached for her hand. "No," he told her. "Call CTU… Talk to Chloe…," he said stopping to breathe between each short sentence. "She'll know what to do. The President…still has to believe…that I'm dead."

Audrey nodded and found Chloe's number among Jack's contacts. She was grateful when the phone was answered on the first ring.

"CTU. O'Brian."

"Chloe," Audrey said as calmly as possible. "It's Audrey. Jack's been shot in the chest. He needs help now! How soon can you get someone here to help him?"

"Slow down, Audrey. Where are you?"

"I don't know. It's some kind of warehouse, but I don't know where we are. Please, Chloe, help me. Jack's not breathing very well. You have to send help."

"Calm down, Audrey. I'm pretty sure I know where you are. Tony and Chase are on their way. Hold on while I get them on comm."

Audrey waited while Chloe talked to Tony. While she waited, she kissed Jack's forehead. "It's okay, Jack. They're coming. Help will be here soon. You just have to hold on a little longer. Can you do that?"

"I'm trying," he whispered. His breath had become faster and more shallow.

"Audrey," Chloe said. "Tony and Chase are less than a quarter mile from the warehouse. They can provide basic first aid and I've got a med-evac chopper in the air on the way to transport Jack back to CTU medical. Is he still breathing?"

"A little bit," Audrey said unable to control her fear any longer. She dropped the phone and put her face next to Jack's hoping to feel him exhale against her skin. "Jack!" she called as she shook his shoulders. "Jack, you have to breathe! Jack, don't do this! Please! Chloe, he's not breathing. Where are Tony and Chase?" she asked as she grabbed the phone from the floor.

"They'll be there," Chloe said, urgency now filling her voice. "Does he have a pulse? Check his neck. Look for a pulse." Chloe's eyes filled with tears as she gave Audrey directions.

"Oh, God, no! He doesn't have a pulse!" Audrey cried.

"Do you know CPR? You have to start CPR," Chloe told her. "Audrey, pull yourself together. You have to do this."

"I know, I know," Audrey said in a strong voice. "I can do it." Ignoring the intense pain, Audrey pulled herself into a kneeling position and mustered all of her strength. With her heel of her hands against Jack's sternum, she started the chest compressions. She was just positioning his head to give a breath when she heard Tony and Chase running across the warehouse floor.

She completed two breathes before collapsing in exhaustion. "Thank God you're here!" she gasped as she saw Tony and Chase. "You have to save him!"

Tony dropped to his knees and straddled Jack's chest. "Damn it, Jack! This is the second time I've had to do this. Don't you even think of dying on me! Do you hear me?" he asked as he began doing chest compressions. "Chase, call Chloe and get the ETA on that chopper. I'm not sure how long we can keep him alive."

Audrey brought herself back up into a sitting position and watched, horrified, as Tony and Chase did CPR and communicated with CTU. It seemed like an eternity before the helicopter rotors could be heard in the distance.

The paramedic team took control of the situation as soon as they arrived. Audrey marveled at their composure as they started IV lines and injected medications and then shocked Jack's heart back into rhythm. Her fears eased somewhat as she heard the team commander tell CTU medical that Jack was stable enough for transport. In the meantime, she had forgotten all about her own injury. It wasn't until the helicopter had taken off and she tried to stand that pain and blood loss overtook her and she nearly passed out into Tony's arms.

That was actually the first that either Chase or Tony realized how badly injured Audrey was. Until then their focus had been on Jack and Audrey had repeatedly told them that she was fine. Now, unable to stand and with blood saturating her jeans from mid-thigh to below her knee, Audrey allowed Tony to carry her to the car and lay her across the back seat.

Perhaps from exhaustion or perhaps from loss of blood, Audrey found herself drifting off to sleep during the ride to CTU. She fought sleep as hard as she could, wanting to be awake so that she could get news of Jack's condition as soon as it was available. As if in the background and far away from her, she could hear Tony and Chase talking to Chloe and Michelle on the radio. She heard Tony describing some injuries and realized that he was talking about her. Chloe told him that medical personnel would be standing by. A few minutes later, Chloe announced that the med-evac chopper had landed and that Jack was going straight to the operating room. Knowing that Jack was in good hands, Audrey no longer bothered to fight sleep. She allowed herself to succumb to the peaceful feeling.

She awoke again when they arrived at CTU. Tony's gentle voice roused her from her reverie. "Audrey, we're at CTU. We need to get you to the medical unit."

"Jack?" she said without opening her eyes.

"He's in surgery. It's going to be awhile before we know anything. You just relax and let us get you to medical," Tony told her.

By then medical personnel along with Jim Heller were running toward the car.

"Audrey!" Jim shouted still several feet away. "Thank God you're alive," he said softly as he forced his was between people and leaned into the rear door of the car. He kissed Audrey's cheek gently. She could feel tears from her father's face dampening her own cheek. "I was so afraid that I was going to lose you, sweetheart."

"I'm sorry, Dad. I guess I made a mess of things. I should've left Jack alone. Now Charles Logan is going to find out the he's alive and he'll have Jack arrested," Audrey said in a soft, weak voice. "This is all my fault."

"Don't worry about it right now, Audrey. We need to get both you and Jack taken care of and then we'll worry about the consequences."

"Secretary Heller, we need to get your daughter inside, sir," one of the medics reminded him.

"Of course," Jim replied. With that, he stepped back to allow the medical personnel to lift Audrey from the car and onto a gurney. Once she was situated and strapped on, he took her hand and trotted along side of the gurney and into the medical unit.

Audrey had no idea what time it was when she awoke hours later in a dimly lit hospital room. She felt as if she had been hit by a truck. Her body was sore all over and her left leg felt as if it weighed a ton. She lifted her head enough to see that the leg was heavily bandaged and was propped up off the bed. Three different bags of intravenous solutions hung above her and she could see one IV line in her left arm and another in her right hand.

As she turned her head to survey the rest of the room, she saw her father dozing in a nearby chair. Audrey didn't know why she was surprised to see him. She knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't be anywhere else in the world. He was beside her for all of the difficult moments in her life and now here he was again.

She opened her mouth to call his name, but it was so dry that no sound came out. On the table to her left sat a white, Styrofoam cup next to a water pitcher. It was within her reach, but the stretch to pick it up cause Audrey to groan involuntarily. She tried to stifle it, but couldn't and the sound was enough to wake her father. He was on his feet in seconds.

"Hey," he said softly as he rushed to her side. "Lie still. I'll get that." He held the cup in front of Audrey so that she could drink. "How are you feeling?"

She tried to smile at him. "About as bad as you look."

Now it was Jim's turn to smile. He kissed her forehead. "Still have a sense of humor. That's good."

"How's Jack?"

"He came out of surgery a little while ago. They're watching him closely, but the surgeon seemed optimistic. He said we won't know anything for sure for a couple of days, but Jack's strong, I know he can pull through."

Audrey nodded and closed her eyes. "When can I see him?"

"You're not going anywhere for a couple of days, honey. You just finished four hours of surgery and you're lucky you've still got that leg."

"How much damage was done?"

"You were lucky. The bullet didn't hit an artery or you probably would have bled to death at the warehouse before they could have gotten you back to CTU. The bullet damagedsome veins, but the vascular surgeon was able to repair them. The other problem was that the bullet hit the bone and broke it. The orthopedic surgeon had to put a rod in to stabilize it. You're going to be off your feet for a while. The doctor wants to keep the leg immobile for four weeks and then he said he'd consider a brace. Once you get the brace, you'll need physical therapy. It's going to be long road, Audrey but it's not insurmountable.

"I'm not worried about me. I'm worried about Jack. Is he awake? Can I get a message to him?

"The doctors are keeping his sedated right now, but they plan to start waking him up in the morning. Tony and Michelle are with him. I'm sure they'll pass on any messages that you'd like when he wakes up."

"Does Logan know that he's alive?"

"Not yet," Heller sighed. He was tired and the last few days had been emotionally draining for him. At the same time, he knew that what to come was not going to make him much happier. "I know you don't feel up to it right now, Audrey, but we have some decisions to make. Actually, it might be more correct to say that _you_ have some decisions to make. After you've been awake a few more minutes I'll call Bill Buchanan, he needs to discuss some options with you."

"Options? What kind of options?"

"Like I said, I'm going to let him go through all of it with you because he's got all of the details. Frankly, after what Jack did to him this morning, it's a wonder that Buchanan didn't personally turn Jack over to Charles Logan," Jim said with the slightest of smiles breaking his very serious look.

"What did Jack do? He didn't hurt Bill, did he?" Audrey asked almost afraid to hear the answer.

Jim couldn't help but smile now. "He drugged Bill and Curtis so that he could escape from the safe house. Neither of them woke up until you and Jack were both in surgery."

As bad as she felt, Audrey just had to roll her eyes and smile. "Oh, Jack!" she said in an amused voice. "Are they okay now?"

"They slept it off and now they're both fine. They're embarrassed, but they're fine." Heller picked up his phone. "Let me call Bill now and he can come in and talk to you."

Ten minutes later Bill walked into Audrey's room. He was, as usual, dressed smartly in a dark suit, perfectly groomed, not a single one of his prematurely gray hairs out of place. Only a slight darkening beneath his blue eyes making him look a little tired gave away what he had gone through earlier in the day. He smiled at Audrey and greeted her warmly as he entered the room.

Audrey didn't want to be rude, but at the same time, she didn't feel like making small talk either. She wanted to ask for something for pain but she also needed for her mind to be clear if, as her father had said, she was going to have to make decisions. "Bill, my father said that I had some options to consider and some decisions to make. I don't understand. Can you fill me in?"

Bill nodded and rested his hands on the bed rail. "As of right now, only a few key people know that Jack is alive and that you have been rescued. We've kept it very quiet. We admitted you and Jack to the medical unit under assumed names and we've kept heavy guard on your doors so no one except a few authorized people actually know that you're here. Those people have all been briefed on the importance of keeping your identities a secret."

"I understand why you're protecting Jack, but why are you protecting me?"

"According to Chloe, the reason you went to Mojave to find Jack was to offer him protection from the British government. Your father confirmed that. My understanding is that the same protection has been offered to you if Jack agreed to it, and that once Jack was settled in England that they would stage some sort of accident and report that you had been killed."

Audrey nodded and tears sprung to her eyes. "That was the plan. I guess there's no chance for that now."

"There is still a chance, Audrey. That's why we've kept your identities a secret. Right now the world thinks that Jack Bauer is dead, so once he's recovered, he's free to go to that location. If you want to go with him and he is in agreement, all we have to do is report that you were killed by your abductors."

Audrey understood. "Phillip and Graem Bauer are both dead. So no one knows that I left the warehouse alive."

"That's right," Bill agreed. "If we tell the press that Graem killed you and that he and his father died in a shoot out with CTU, everyone will believe that you are dead."

"The press is going to want a motive as to why Graem Bauer kidnapped me. What are you going to tell them?" Audrey asked.

"We'll have to tell them a modified version of the truth. All the press needs to know is that before Jack died, he found evidence that Graem and Phillip were skimming from BXJ. They eventually learned that you and Jack had been intimately involved and became concerned that you knew enough about the theft to turn them over to the authorities. They kidnapped you to shut you up."

"That's going to result in a lot of bad press for BXJ," Audrey commented. "Jack's daughter stands to inherit half of the company. I don't think Jack is going to like that."

"That can't be helped," Bill shrugged. "The truth is, the IRS was already looking at BXJ's tax returns. Apparently they didn't think things added up either. So it probably wouldn't have been too long before Phillip and Graem were caught. Either way the press would be bad for the company."

"We have one other problem, Bill," Audrey told him.

"What's that?"

"A man by the name of Christopher Henderson also knows that Jack is alive. I'm not sure what his relationship was to Graem and Phillip. I got the sense that the kidnapping was Graem's idea and that Henderson was brought in by Phillip later to mop up the mess."

"Wait a minute," Bill said, his brow furrowed in confusion. "Is this the Christopher Henderson that Jack brought down about ten years ago? He was fairly high ranking at CTU, maybe director of field ops and Jack set up a sting operation to catch Henderson in some illegal act."

"It's the same guy," Audrey nodded. "He knows that Jack's alive. If you simply report to the press that I'm dead and there's no mention of Jack, Henderson's going to get suspicious."

"He can be as suspicious as he wants to be, but he can't come forward to raise any of his suspicions because he's also neck deep in this thing. For all intents and purposes, he was complicit in your kidnapping. At a minimum we can get him for aiding and abetting. He's smart enough to keep his mouth shut."

"He's also ruthless enough to come after Jack. He did it before. I'm sure that it was Henderson who tried to kill Jack in Chicago. He's going to come after Jack again."

"You're right, Audrey. That's possible, but it won't be as easy this time. The British government isn't going to go to all of the trouble of setting Jack up in a protection plan just to have him discovered by someone. They'll put a lot of safeguards in place. Henderson found Jack through his communications with Chloe. It was careless on their part to communicate on unsecured lines, but they didn't have the choice. Jack won't need to take those chances when he's got the support of a government behind him. On top of that, I'm not above using a little intimidation. I can let Henderson know that if anything happens to Jack, that I'll press changes against him for aiding and abetting Graem and Phillip in your abduction."

"You don't have enough evidence to make that stick."

"You know that, but he doesn't," Bill said with a vague smile.

"Tell me something, Bill. Why are you doing this? Why are you going out on a limb for Jack and me? You certainly don't owe us anything."

"I don't know, maybe I'm just a romantic at heart," Bill laughed.

"Seriously," Audrey said.

"Maybe I think the US government abandoned Jack when he needed them most. He's given up too much for this country for me to turn him in now. The only way to fully repay him is to give him his name and his life back. I don't have the authority to do that, but I can do this."

"You could lose your job over this. You could be charged with a crime."

"I suppose I could, but I don't think it's likely. In order to fire me or charge me, President Logan would have to admit that the assault on the Chinese embassy actually happened. He can't afford to do that. I'm not worried about Logan." Bill sighed quietly and continued in a more serious tone. "Audrey. I know how much you've been through in the last few days and I hate to press you for a decision, but I'm going to have to have a final answer from you within the next couple of days. In the meantime, CTU is going to report that you were rescued from the warehouse but that your condition is critical. We won't give any additional details citing the family's request for privacy. We'll go ahead and report that Graem and Phillip Bauer are dead and say that the motive for the kidnapping remains under investigation. All of that will buy us some time. By then we'll know how Jack is recovering and if he is still interested in the protection that the British government is offering. If everyone is in agreement, we'll make an announcement that you died of injuries inflicted by your captors. Then we'll make arrangements with the British government to have you flown there when your conditions stabilize. Take a couple of days and think it all over, Audrey. I don't want you to make any rash decisions.

"Thank you, Bill, but I don't need the time. The decision isn't rash. I've been considering it for several weeks and spending some time with Jack in Mojave just made me realize how much we love each other."

Bill nodded. "Then if it's alright with you, I'll sit down with Chloe and Michelle and we'll put together a press release that you're condition is listed as critical and the family has requested privacy."

"That should be enough to keep the press at bay for a while," Audrey agreed.

"Both of you should try and get some rest I'll take care of everything from here on out," Bill told them as he exited the room leaving father and daughter alone.

Jim took his daughter's hand and kissed it. "I'm so proud of you, Audrey. You were the only person who questioned Jack's death. The rest of us bought the story. If it weren't for you…"

Audrey interrupted. "If it weren't for me, Jack wouldn't be in intensive care fighting for his life. He'd be in Mojave and he'd be safe."

"Don't do this to yourself, Audrey. You didn't mean for things to happen the way they did, but it was only a matter of time before Graem or Henderson found Jack and went after him. Even if Jack escaped again like he did in Chicago, he couldn't run forever. He was going to live a miserable existence and they were eventually going to kill him. Now the two of you have a chance to be happy."

"Dad, thank you for being so understanding." Audrey's words caught in her throat as her eyes filled with tears. "I know how hard this is on you, but I have to do it. I have to go with Jack. That's where I belong. I just wish there was a way to do it so that you wouldn't get hurt."

Audrey could tell that her father was fighting tears. He raised her hand to his lips again. "Sweetheart, you do what you have to and I'll find a way to live with it. I would much rather have you with Jack and happy than living in Washington alone and as sad as you've been for the past year. It hurts me more to see you live like that. We'll find a way to communicate. Maybe not as often as we'd like, but as long as I know that you're safe and happy, I don't need anything else."

"Thank you, Dad," Audrey whispered.

Jim leaned over the bedrail and kissed Audrey's forehead. "You're welcome. Now you get some sleep. I'm going to check on Jack. I'll be back to see you later."


	9. Epilogue

Epilogue

6 Weeks later

"You sit down out here and I'll be right back with breakfast," Jack told Audrey as he helped her sit down at the bistro table on their sunny patio. He brought a second chair closer and faced it toward Audrey, carefully raised her leg and propped it on the chair. "Comfortable?" he asked.

"You're going to spoil me," she said with a smile.

"I certainly hope so," he returned as he kissed the top of her head.

Audrey watched Jack go back into the house. Piper, the English Springer Spaniel that Jack had given her as a gift upon her arrival in England, sat on the flagstone patio next to her. She had only had him for two weeks and he was already overly protective of her. It reminded her of how Jack treated her and she wondered if Jack's protectiveness had simply rubbed off on the animal.

As she looked up at the pale October sky, it struck Audrey, as it did every morning, that she had never been happier in her entire life. Not as a child at home with her parents. Not as a young single experiencing the world on her own for the first time. Not during her eight year marriage to Paul Raines. No, she had never been as happy as she was living in the English countryside in an old Victorian house. Who would have thought that just six weeks earlier she was bound and gagged and lying the back of a Hummer fearing for her life and Jack's as well.

The six weeks hadn't been easy. The first couple of days were particularly anxiety filled as she waited, unable to leave her hospital bed, for word on Jack's condition. Her father and Chloe and Tony and Michelle provided constant updates, but it wasn't like sitting next to him and holding his hand and whispering words of encouragement to him. By the third day, he was improving. The doctors had reduced the level of sedation and he was starting to wake up. When he did, Audrey's name was the first word he spoke. Within hours of that, Jack was sitting up in a chair and he insisted on being taken to Audrey's room to see her. She thought the single best surprise she had ever had was when Tony pushed Jack's wheelchair through her door. She had laughed and cried at the same time, amazed and grateful that he was doing so well.

Jack recovered quickly over the next week or so and the decision was made to transport him to England. Although he wasn't quite fully recovered, any additional medical care could be arranged in England. Maintaining the anonymity of two people even within an agency such as CTU was a difficult task and the sooner they could get either or both of them out, the more likely it was that their identities could be kept a secret. Audrey, on the other hand, was no where near ready for travel at that point. She had required two additional surgeries to fully repair her fractured femur and, although she was healing nicely, the doctors didn't want her moved just yet. So after a quick marriage ceremony, performed in her hospital room by the CTU chaplain, Audrey and Jack said tearful goodbyes and Audrey remained behind waiting impatiently for the doctors to agree that she was ready for the long trip.

That day finally came almost a month to the day after she had been kidnapped. The two rather mirthless doctors who, though seemingly devoid of personality, had taken expert care of Audrey, had just completed the task of removing and replacing the cast on her leg when one of them unexpectedly smiled. "What do you think, Tom? Is she ready for a trip to England?"

The other doctor smiled as well. "I think so. She'll need to avoid the usual tourist spots for a while," he said making a weak attempt at humor. "But I think it's safe to move her."

Audrey was so excited that she could barely contain herself. They explained that they had been in contact with doctors in England who would assume her care once she arrived. They had agreed that she would need to stay in the cast for about another two weeks but after that she could have it removed and replaced with a brace. Once that happened, she could begin physical therapy and take the first steps, literally and figuratively, toward a new life. It was a bittersweet moment for Audrey. She wanted to be with Jack more than she could even explain, but at the same time, leaving the US and her identity behind would be permanent. With the decision final, Bill released a statement to the press that Audrey Raines' injuries inflicted by Graem Bauer as she attempted to escape capture, were critical and, despite all efforts of the CTU medical team, resulted in her death. Jim Heller, who had been by her side from the moment she was brought to CTU, now appeared in public briefly in the role of grieving father. His office, believing the story to be true, released a statement from Heller thanking the public for their support and asking for privacy. He had asked Charles Logan for and had been granted a three month leave of absence from his duties. That would allow time for the story to die down after which he could return to work.

It was late at night when Jack met Audrey at the same military airbase where he himself had arrived a couple of weeks earlier. The military flight wasn't on anyone's log. MI6 had arranged it. Only a few covert agents, including the flight crew, knew the purpose of the flight or who they were ferrying into the UK. As soon as the plane taxied to the terminal and came to a stop, Jack was permitted out onto the tarmac. The fight crew left the plane and Jack boarded to help Audrey off. Her heart pounded as she watched through the window as Jack ran up the steps to the plane. He was out of her line of sight for a second before he stepped into the plane and hurried to her. They kissed happily and pulled each other into a deep embrace. Jack finally loosened his grip and backed off slightly so he could look at Audrey.

"Wow!" he laughed. "I never imagined you as a brunette."

"Do you like it?" Audrey asked anxiously. Her hair had been cut into a short, shaggy style and dyed light brown with blond highlights.

"I love it. You look great," Jack told her as he kissed her again. "Come on. Let's get out of here. It's time to go home."

Home! With Jack! Audrey's heart soared. Nothing in the world could have made her happier. It didn't matter that the logistics of getting her home, wearing a cast that immobilized her entire left leg, were difficult. She didn't care. It was worth it. Two large, young MI6 agents carefully loaded her onto a stretcher and carried her down from the plane to the tarmac where a medical van waited for her. The drive to their home was just over an hour and it included some uncomfortably bumpy roads. Again, Audrey didn't care. She squeezed Jack's hand and tried hard not to grimace but each time the young MI6 agent who had been drafted as a driver apologized anyway. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Fletcher," he would say almost sheepishly. And Audrey would dismiss it, saying that she was fine and, at the same time, reveling in hearing someone say her new name. Pamela Fletcher. Mrs. Alex Fletcher. She had said the name to herself a thousand times in her mind, but she couldn't help but smile when someone else said it.

The sun was just rising when they finally reached their home. It was an old Victorian house painted a sunny yellow and trimmed in white. Two chimneys poked through the roof and big trees shaded the entire property. Audrey fell in love with it the moment she saw it. The driver helped Jack carry Audrey up onto the huge front porch, but Jack insisted on carrying her over the threshold himself and dismissed the driver.

"Should you be doing this?" Audrey protested. "You haven't completely recovered from your own injuries. I'm not sure your doctor would approve."

"To hell with my doctor!" Jack told her in no uncertain terms. "I am carrying my wife over the threshold or we'll be doomed to bad luck forever."

"I think we're safe," Audrey laughed. "I'm not sure our luck can get worse."

Jack managed to carry her in and set her down on the sofa just a little harder than he had planned. "I'm sorry," he whispered seeing a vague wave of pain cloud Audrey's eyes. "I guess I'm not quite back in shape and that cast adds more weight than I thought it would."

"Tell me about it!" Audrey said with a roll of her eyes. "When they take it off I'll instantly lose 20 pounds!"

"With the cast or without it," Jack started. "I'm just happy to see you. I love you and I've missed you so much."

"I've missed you, too," Audrey said leaning awkwardly into him for yet another embrace.

"It's over, sweetheart. All of the bad is behind us. We get to start over. I know how much you hated to leave your father, but this is our chance to finally be together."

"I know. I'll miss my dad, but this is what I want. I want to be with you, Jack."

He touched her lips gently. "No, not Jack. Don't ever say that. Not even when it's just the two of us. If you do it when we're alone, you're going to slip some day when we're out in public and we can't afford that. You have to get used to calling me Alex."

"I know and I will. I promise," Audrey told him sincerely. "We've been given an incredible chance to start over and I promise you that I won't screw that up. This is my dream come true. I've wanted to have this chance to start over from the first moment that Bill told me that you were dead. All I've wanted was to be able to tell you what a mistake I'd made and to start again."

Audrey spent the next couple of weeks enjoying the early autumn weather and catching up on her reading and trying to ignore the fact that she was largely a prisoner to a wheelchair and the first floor of her house. But things were looking up on this particular morning. This was the first day in six weeks that she hadn't had a bulky cast keeping her from moving. At an appointment with the doctor the day before, he had removed the cast as promised and replaced it with a brace. She still couldn't put any weight on her leg, but she was allowed to move around using crutches and it made her feel as if she had been freed from a cage.

Jack walked out onto the patio with a tray loaded with a pot of coffee, orange juice, scones and fresh fruit. He set the tray on the table and began pouring two cups of coffee.

"You know," Audrey started. "If this MI6 gig doesn't work out, I can hire you out as a butler. I'm sure some rich, old woman would love to have a handsome butler to serve all of her meals." Audrey loved to tease Jack about the domestic skills he had acquired since she had been wheelchair bound.

"If that's what it took to support us, I'd do it in a second," Jack told her sincerely. "But I'm only working as your butler because the fringe benefits are incredible," he whispered into her ear just before he placed a long, deep kiss on her mouth.

"Either stop now or plan on helping me right back upstairs," Audrey told Jack as their lips parted but their faces remained close.

"Maybe we better hold that thought for a few hours. The IT specialist I've been working with is coming over today to put in some more equipment," Jack said as he sat down in the chair next to Audrey's. "Oh, that reminds me," he said as he stood back up. "You have to see this." Jack walked back into the house and came back with his notebook computer. "Wait till you see this," he said as he opened the computer and set it up. Audrey watched as he clicked the mouse and moved the cursor and within seconds the image he was looking for was in front of her.

"Oh, look at him!" Audrey cooed. "He's already getting so big! Look at how much hair he has!" she exclaimed as she looked at the picture of two week old Jack Bauer Almeida. "He's precious. They must be so thrilled."

Jack and Tony communicated regularly on a secure line. Tony and Michelle continued to run their computer business, but through Jack, arrangements had been made for Tony to freelance for MI6. He provided some expertise that they were looking for and the job gave Tony the chance to be part of the intelligence community, something that he had really missed. Michelle had been reluctant about the arrangement at first, but she understood that Tony, like Jack, could never fully walk away from that life. It would call him back regardless, so it was best to agree to his participation on a limited basis.

"You have to see the next picture. Tony looks like he hasn't slept in a week," Jack laughed.

"Don't laugh," Audrey warned him. "That might be you someday."

"Yeah, I know," Jack returned. "You have to get better before we're going to worry about that."

Audrey nodded in agreement. "I don't think we need for me to have a baby before I can walk again," she said as she clicked the mouse to see the next picture. "The two of them look so happy, but poor Michelle doesn't look like she's sleeping too well either."

Jack looked at his watch. "It's almost 2:30 in the morning in North Carolina, for their sakes I sure hope their sleeping now."

Tony and Michelle were sleeping. And little Jack had been asleep for almost two full hours, a nearly unheard of accomplishment for the two week old. Michelle lay curled on her side facing Tony who had become very restless as a nightmare crossed his sleep deprived brain. He turned to the left and then to the right as images filled his head.

"Michelle," he said in a mumbling, sleepy voice. "Michelle, don't so this."

Tony thrashed sharply to his left bumping into Michelle and waking her. "Tony? Are you alright?" she asked as she opened her eyes.

Tony didn't answer; he was still asleep. "Michelle!" he said again. His voice was still sleepy, but the tone had become more urgent.

"Tony, it's okay. I'm right here. You're dreaming. Wake up, honey," Michelle cooed gently.

"Michelle!" Tony screamed and sat bolt upright. "Michelle!"

Michelle grabbed his shoulders and shook him hard to awaken him. "I'm here, Tony! It's okay!"

Tony opened his eyes. It took a second for recognition to set in, but as it did, Tony pulled Michelle into a tight embrace. "You alive!" he gasped. "Thank God! You're not hurt."

"Tony, you were dreaming. I'm fine," Michelle said calmly trying to extricate herself from Tony's arms. "Let go, honey. You're hurting me." 

Tony relaxed a bit until he remembered their baby in the next room. "My God! Jack!" he cried and with that, launched himself off the bed and ran to the nursery.

Michelle was behind him. "Tony, Jack is fine. He's sleeping. Leave him alone!"

Tony turned on the light in the nursery and leaned over the crib. He put his hand near the baby's face and finally allowed himself to breathe when he felt Jack's warm breath on his hand. "Oh, thank God!" he panted. "He's okay." Tony reached into the crib to pick up his young son, but Michelle's hands grasped his wrists to prevent him from touching the child.

"Are you out of your mind? He's been asleep for two hours. That's a record for him. Don't you dare wake that baby up!" she hissed in a quiet but angry voice. "Now turn off the light and let's get out of here before he hears us."

Tony nodded, flicked off the light switch and followed Michelle out of the room.

"Tell me what's wrong. What kind of dream were you having?"

Tony ignored her questions and went back to their bedroom. He picked up the remote control for the television and turned on a 24 hour news channel.

"Tony, what is going on?" Michelle asked again.

Tony raised a hand to silence her while he watched.

"It's 2:30 in the morning. Why are you watching the news?"

"Because I need to make sure it didn't happen."

"What didn't happen?"

"I dreamed that David Palmer was assassinated," Tony said nervously. "I need to know that it didn't really happen."

"Oh, Tony," Michelle said gently as she sat next to him on the bed. "If David Palmer had been assassinated, that would be the only story on the news right now. Look, they're talking about the weather. David Palmer is fine."

"You're right. I guess it was just a dream," Tony conceded as he turned off the television.

"That must have been some nightmare," Michelle commented. "Why did you think Jack and I had been hurt?"

"It was crazy. I dreamed that we were in our old house in LA. We were eating breakfast and watching the news when we heard that David Palmer had been assassinated in LA. You wanted to go to CTU to help in the investigation and I didn't. I said that if Bill needed us, he'd call us. You disagreed and decided to go without me. I asked you not to go, but you walked out of the house. At first I was mad, but then I decided to go with you. I picked up my phone. I don't know who I was calling, but I think I had to cancel an appointment with a client. Right about then there was this huge explosion. I ran outside yelling for you and your car was on fire. I kept screaming your name and I was running through the debris trying to find you. I finally found you under a door and I got it off of you and I was feeling for a pulse. I couldn't find a pulse. Oh, honey," he said as he draw her into his arms. "I was so scared. I was so afraid that I lost you. When I woke up and realized that you were okay, I panicked and thought maybe something had happened to the baby. I'm sorry I went so crazy. It's just that I can't imagine losing either one of you. I don't know how I would go on."

Michelle kissed his cheek. "You're not going to lose either one of us, Tony. I'm not going anywhere. We're nowhere near LA. We're safe here. Your CTU days are behind you and the work you're doing for MI6 is all computer related. The bad guys aren't coming after you any more."

"I know. Thank God for that. When Jack decided to escape and Chase and I had to go after him, leaving you at the safe house was the hardest thing I ever did. Knowing that little Jack was going to be born in a couple of weeks and I was putting my ass on the line and might not come back just scared the hell out of me."

"If you want to know the truth, it scared me, too. I tried not to show it, but I was scared. The whole time you were gone, I just kept praying that you'd come back to me. But it's over now. We need to put all of that behind us."

"I know. You're right," Tony said leaning in to kiss Michelle's face. "Let's go back to sleep."

"Sounds good to me," Michelle agreed climbing between the covers and curling up on her side. "I'm exhausted."

Tony lay down beside her and turned off the light. They were just drifting off to sleep when they heard little Jack start to cry.

"Ugh!" Michelle exclaimed. "I knew it was too good to be true."

"But he slept over two hours this time, Michelle. That's good for him."

"I know, but it's not long enough for me!" Michelle said as she stood up and put on her bathrobe. "I'll take care of him," she offered. "You've already had a rough night. Maybe you should get some sleep."

"Yeah, maybe sleep deprivation causes nightmares," Tony laughed. "Because we haven't had much sleep lately and that was the worst nightmare I've had in my entire life!"

**THE END!**

_Hey, hope you didn't mind my silly ending. I thought the story could use some levity and I also thought that writing off season 5 (especially episode 1) as a bad dream was the best thing I could do for it. Now I can really pretend that it never happened. _

_Thanks for reading and, as always, I'm begging for reviews. I love reviews! Don't disappoint me, PLEASE!_


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